With rise in desertions, Army cracks down
Prosecutions up sharply since '02
NEW YORK -- Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years, resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time for both junior soldiers and combat-tested veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army records show.
The increase in prosecutions is meant to serve as a deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are ambivalent about heading -- or heading back -- to Iraq and might be looking for a way out, several Army lawyers said.
Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, said military lawyers and mental health specialists.
"They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out," said Dr. Thomas Grieger, a senior Navy psychiatrist. Though there are no current studies to show how combat stress affects desertion rates, Grieger cited several examples of soldiers absconding or refusing to return to Iraq because of psychiatric reasons brought on by wartime deployments.
From 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army prosecutions of desertion tripled compared with the five-year period from 1997 to 2001, to roughly 6 percent of deserters, from 2 percent, Army data shows.
Between these two five-year spans -- one prewar and one during wartime -- prosecutions for similar crimes, like absence without leave or failing to appear for unit missions, have more than doubled, to an average of 390 per year from an average of 180 per year, Army data shows.
Since 2002 the Army has court-martialed twice as many soldiers for desertion and other unauthorized absences as it did on average each year from 1997 to 2001.
Most soldiers who return from unauthorized absences are discharged. Few return to duty.
The Army said the desertion rate is within historical norms, and that the increase in prosecutions, at the discretion of unit commanders, was not a surprise considering the impact that absent soldiers can have in wartime.
Officers said the crackdown reflected awareness by top Army and Defense Department officials that desertions, which occurred among more than 1 percent of the active-duty force in 2000 for the first time since the post-Vietnam era, were in a sustained upswing again after ebbing in 2003, the first year of the Iraq war.
The increase highlights a cycle long known to Army researchers: as the demand for soldiers increases during a war, desertions rise and the Army tends to lower standards, recruiting more people with questionable backgrounds who are more likely to desert. 