After Recent Department of Defense Report Highlights Continued Failure to Address Military Sexual Assault, Baldwin Helps Reintroduce Military Justice Improvement Act

Statement

U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin joined a bipartisan group of Senators, led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), to reintroduce the Military Justice Improvement Act to professionalize how the military prosecutes serious crimes by moving the decision over whether to prosecute them to independent, trained, professional military prosecutors.

"The men and women in our armed forces serve with courage in defense of our freedom every single day," said Senator Baldwin. "I am proud to join this bipartisan effort to provide solutions to the ongoing crisis of sexual assault in the military. The system is broken and it's long past time we fix it. Our service men and women deserve better and I am pleased that we are taking action."

"Our nation's military leaders have spent decades promising "zero tolerance' on sexual assault, but it's painfully clear that they've failed at that mission. The Pentagon, by its own admission, is out of time -- and should now be out of excuses," said Senator Gillibrand. "For years, survivor after survivor has told us the change we need to make in the military justice system to end the scourge of sexual assault in our military -- the same change that some of our allies all around the world have already made: move the decision to try these crimes outside of the chain of command to trained military prosecutors. The Department of Defense has tried incremental reforms, but they clearly haven't worked. Sexual assault is still pervasive -- in fact the latest DoD numbers show that sexual assaults in the military have dramatically increased while the number of cases going to trial has gone down. None of this is acceptable. It's long past time for Congress to step up and create accountability where the DoD has failed. That is how we will finally give our men and women in uniform a justice system that is fair, professional, and actually works."

According to the Department of Defense's own data in this year's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) report, there were an estimated 20,500 instances of sexual assault -- a massive increase over the 14,900 estimated in the previous 2016 survey. The number of women in the military who experienced sexual assault increased by 50%, from 8,600 in FY2016 to 13,000 in FY2018. In fact, by DoD's own admission, the odds of young service women experiencing a sexual assault is one in eight, yet commanders have sent fewer cases to trial -- from 588 in FY2014, to 389 in FY2016, to 307 in FY2018.

Five years ago, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, said the military was "on the clock" to fix military sexual assault, and indicated it would be right to bring a bill back to the floor in a year if they hadn't solved the problem. In the years since, incremental reforms have been implemented yet sexual assault in the military has remained pervasive and dramatically increased over the last two years, with many service members still having little faith in the military justice system.

The Military Justice Improvement Act would professionalize how the military prosecutes serious crimes like sexual assault, which would help remove the systemic fear that survivors of military sexual assault describe in deciding whether to report the crimes committed against them. This legislation would remove the sole decision-making authority over whether serious crimes are prosecuted from the military chain-of-command and give it to independent, trained military prosecutors. Uniquely military crimes, such as a soldier going AWOL, and other non-judicial and administrative remedies would stay within the chain of command.

Specifically, the Military Justice Improvement Act would do the following:

Grant the authority to send criminal charges to trial (disposition authority) to designated judge advocates (military lawyers) in the rank of O-6 or higher who possess significant criminal justice experience.
Ensure that judge advocates vested with disposition authority would
Be outside the chain of command of the accused.
Exercise professional prosecutorial judgment when deciding whether to proceed to court martial.
Render decisions to proceed to trial free from conflicts of interest.

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