When sailors and Marines get into legal trouble while at sea, commanding officers have the right to invoke a process known as vessel exception. This would override an accused’s right to refuse non-judicial punishment (mast) and demand a court-martial trial.
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) stated that the Navy and Marines need to improve oversight of the use of vessel exception – particularly as it pertains to reporting data in regards to non-judicial punishment such as forfeiture of pay or a reduction in grade. The services, as it turns out, concur.
Meting out shipboard discipline, they agree, could benefit from compilation of data unhindered by human error or the lack of an automated process.
The GAO report noted that the Navy’s intention to implement automated tracking of nonjudicial punishment data in 2022 was derailed by funding issues. And while the service issued a clarification earlier this year in regards to reporting procedures, it “does not address data quality issues stemming from the manual compilation of data,” the report stated.
“Without establishing a time frame to automate the collection and maintenance of quality nonjudicial punishment data and then implementing these automated processes, the Navy, the Marine Corps and Congress may be hindered in their ability to provide sufficient oversight of nonjudicial punishment and the use of vessel exception,” the report stated.
Better data would provide a means of analyzing trends in military justice and help measure the overall effectiveness of “discipline-related initiatives,” the report stated.
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