Offender military enlistment as an emotionally intelligent justice system intervention

Journal of Criminal Justice 38 (2010) 376–382

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Journal of Criminal Justice

Offender military enlistment as an emotionally intelligent justice system intervention☆ J. Mitchell Miller a,⁎, J. Eagle Shutt b, Barry Bernstein c a b c

Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78207, United States Department of Justice Administration, University of Louisville, Brigman Hall 210, Louisville, KY 40292, United States South Carolina National Guard, Columbia, SC 29201, United States

a b s t r a c t Military enlistment programs offer offenders opportunities to serve in the armed forces as alternatives to traditional criminal sanctioning both prior and post adjudication. Offender enlistment as a form of diversion embodies a rehabilitative ideal but faces formidable cultural and institutional implementation barriers, including recruiting regulations, security clearance requirements, public relations considerations, and military distrust. This study explored the utility of offender enlistment as an emotionally intelligent justice system intervention. It is argued that offender enlistment addresses internal and external offender control deficits while avoiding the expense and stigma of incarceration. The policy implications of offender enlistment as normative practice are considered. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction After a quarter-century of rising incarceration rates (Gottschalk, 2002), staggering costs (Pew Center on the States, 2008), and high recidivism rates (Richards, Austin, & Jones, 2004), justice system critics have called for emotionally intelligent justice system (EIJS) alternatives (Sherman, 2003; also see Woolf, 2002) designed to account for irrational and emotion-oriented reasoning by offenders and victims (Massey, 2002). Crime-prone individuals are often resistant to standard criminal justice approaches, such as incarceration or probation, which fail to address offender internal and external control deficits. Internally, crime-prone offenders tend to be impulsive and have difficulty deferring gratification (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Pratt & Cullen, 2000). Externally, such individuals are frequently exposed to criminogenic environments via peer associations (Akers, 1998; Haynie & Osgood, 2005) and social disorganization (Shaw & McKay, 1942). Typically, EIJS intervention attempts to account for such deficits via intermediate sanctions such as diversion or post-incarceration reintegration programs (see Laub & Sampson, 2003; Tewksbury & DeMichele, 2003). Problematically, these efforts are typically resource and collaboration intensive, requiring infrastructure development/modification and additional personnel. Offender military enlistment affords a potential EIJS intervention by addressing offender internal and external control deficits identifiable through theoretical criminology. In providing offender relocation, long-term structure, and income, offender enlistment programs ☆ This paper was accepted under the Editorship of Kent Joscelyn. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 201 458 2537; fax: +1 210 458 2680. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.M. Miller). 0047-2352/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2010.04.005

should reduce recidivism by modulating criminogenic variables as conceptualized by social bond theory (Hirschi, 1969), life-course theory (Sampson & Laub, 1993), social disorganization theory (Shaw & McKay, 1942), social learning theory (Akers, 1998), and self-control theory (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; see Burt, Simons, & Simons, 2006). Offender enlistment faces, however, formidable cultural and institutional barriers to normative implementation (Hillman, 2005; Jacobs, 1986). This study examined the utility of military enlistment for crime prevention. Additionally, this study considered whether offender enlistment affords a net system cost-savings by avoiding incarceration costs and reducing or eliminating enlistment bonuses while producing marginally poorer but acceptable outcome-comparable enlistments. Findings and discussion center around the proposition that enlistment in the military should be considered by policymakers as a viable incarceration alternative. Background Since the late 1970s, incapacitation has emerged as the dominant penal model, largely displacing the rehabilitative initiatives launched earlier that decade (Zimring & Hawkins, 1995). Penal policy emphasizing goals other than incapacitation (see e.g., Cullen, 2002) is fundamentally rooted in the belief that offender change is realizable and thus a primary justice system goal. Such policy seeks attitudinal change through cognitive restructuring and social support programming. Unfavorable attitudes toward offenders have proliferated in America, however, in part due to criminology and criminal justice researching suggesting that particular individuals are resistant to sanctions, and essentially, deterrence (see e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi,

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1990; Martinson, 1974; Moffitt, 1993). Over time, the public increasingly viewed crime as an actuarial risk, resulting in what Garland (2001) termed a culture of control characterized by an increased reliance on formal social control interventions, such as prisons. In getting elected and/or re-elected in this new culture, policymakers relied on “get tough” on crime messages and promises. After taking such positions, policymakers were averse to considering incarceration alternatives. In quadrupling the prison population from 500,000 to two million from 1980 to 2004 (Richards et al., 2004), America's “incarceration binge” was arguably the most thoroughly implemented social program of modern times (Currie, 1998). In the ten-year period beginning in 1985, federal and state governments opened a new prison a week to cope with the flood of inmates (Mauer, 1999). Although America comprises just 5 percent of the world's population, it incarcerates 25 percent of the world's prisoners (Gottschalk, 2002). For many Americans, prison or jail has become a routine part of life (Austin & Irwin, 2002). High prison populations have underscored the need for alternative programs which emphasize, ostensibly, rehabilitation (Tewksbury & DeMichele, 2003), such as the use of EIJS intervention through the military. Intermediate sanctions programs emerged as by-products of prison overcrowding, which moved federal courts to order early release, more prisons, or the adoption of other correctional forms (Petersilia, 1998). Criminal justice professionals devised intermediate sanctions that served retributive, incapacitative, and rehabilitative functions while producing overall cost-savings (Petersilia & Deschenes, 1994). Sanctions such as house arrest, electronic monitoring, intensive probation, and boot camps provided judges with enhanced sentencing options beyond a traditional, limited imprisonment or probation dichotomy (Morris & Tonry, 1990). Generally, these intermediate sanctioning programs were deemed more intrusive and burdensome than probation but less so than incarceration (Petersilia, 1997; Tonry, 1997). Overall, intermediate sanctioning during the 1980's and 1990's was more symbolic than substantive as relatively few offenders participated and those who did were largely subjected to enhanced supervision rather than rehabilitation (Petersilia, 1998). With notable exceptions such as drug (U.S. Government Accounting Office, 2005) and youth (Butts, Buck, & Coggeshall, 2002) courts, intermediate sanctioning often demonstrated minimal improvement in recidivism rates, while yielding little overall cost savings, due to extra surveillance, concomitant violation opportunities, and subsequent incarceration (Petersilia & Turner, 1993). Offender enlistment Offender enlistment is an actual, legally binding military enlistment that is distinct from boot camps and similar military-style justice interventions. Like other intermediate approaches, boot camps were intended to alleviate prison overcrowding, as well as rehabilitate (Mackenzie & Shaw, 1990). Programs consisted of regimented activity, hard work, and military drills, with particular emphasis on teamwork (Parent, 1989). Advocates hoped that discipline-oriented activities would create turning points for offenders, who would, ideally, return to general society with conventional values of hard work, discipline, and a cooperative, pro-social outlook, thereby facilitating conventional bonds and increasing the likelihood of desistance. In hindsight, however, most criminologists agree that boot camps were no panacea. Despite short-term positive results, participants demonstrated no long-term benefits (Stinchcomb, 1999; Mackenzie & Shaw, 1990; Mackenzie & Souryal, 1995), likely due to lack of follow up or aftercare (Salerno, 1994). Participants emerged with good intentions, but, in the absence of supervision and practical employment and social alternatives, the “rehabilitative shock” wore off. Boot camp participation accompanied by residential aftercare program

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reduced recidivism (Kurlychek & Kempinen, 2006), ostensibly evidencing that “all possible efforts should be made to conceptualize and operationalize the [boot camp] experience as one that includes both an institutional and an aftercare phase” (Cowles & Castellano, 1995, p. 122). In the end, fiscal constraints and supervision risks minimized the proliferation of boot camps with adequate post-release support. A key difference between boot camps and military enlistment is the latter, by its very nature, is a sustained form of aftercare. Offenders enlist as active-duty soldiers in the Armed Forces for a standard enlistment period. Offenders thereafter are regular soldiers and subject to standard military discipline. This approach relies heavily on military non-commissioned officers, who enforce military norms. As compliance incentives, offenders would receive pay, be eligible for promotion, and enjoy respect and prestige. As noncompliance disincentives, offenders would face first-line enforcers such as first sergeants and drill sergeants, non-judicial punishment, and standard military justice (which can itself result in incarceration). Offender enlistment has three basic forms: (1) diversionary enlistment, wherein offenders enlist in consideration for dismissal of the charges or an analogous avoidance of prosecution; (2) pre-release enlistment, wherein offenders enlist while still under criminal justice supervision; and (2) post-release enlistment, wherein offenders enlist upon completion of criminal justice supervision.1 Type notwithstanding, offender enlistment has long been utilized, both formally and informally. Diversionary enlistment is likely the most common form, although military regulations explicitly forbid offender enlistment conditioned on charge dismissal.2 Informally, nevertheless, prosecutors are known to dismiss charges upon offender enlistment, though the commonness of such behavior is unknown. Pre-release enlistment is similarly contrary to regulation in that the military allows no one to enlist who is under active sentence. Such offender enlistment, however, was practiced in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. From 1940 through 1947, for example, Illinois paroled 2,942 prisoners into the United States Army (Mattick, 1960).3 Currently, some states, such as Texas, provide prerelease sentencing leniency options for enlisting offenders (Texas Administrative Code, 2006). The last type, post-offense enlistment, is not barred by recruiting regulations and has at least one active formal program, Indiana's Future Soldiers Program, oriented at juveniles at Pendleton Correctional Facility. Beginning in the 1970s, as part of an effort to increase recruit quality, the Armed Forces enacted stricter enlistment requirements, which effectively ended pre-release enlistment. Army regulations (AR 601-210, para. 4-32(a), 4-35, 2007), for example, barred enlistees with active sentences, pending charges, or charge dismissals conditioned on military service (for the United States Marines, see Marine Corps Order P1100.72B, 1997). Moreover, Army recruiters were prohibited from direct or indirect involvement with criminal justice dismissals or diversions from prosecution (AR 601-210, para. 4-34, 2007). Informally, however, some forms of pre-release enlistment continued as prosecutors and military recruiters negotiated charge dismissals for enlistment (see e.g., Murray, 2007), although the extent of this practice is unknown. Despite new restrictions, offender enlistment after termination of criminal justice supervision is permitted if the Army grants a specific “moral” waiver (AR 600-210, para. 4-6, 2007). The waiver process may take from one to six years and, depending on offense severity, may require approval by general officers. Though recruiting guidelines have tightened, the military has targeted specific at-risk youth for recruitment. In the 1990s, following a congressional mandate, the Army National Guard implemented its Youth ChalleNGe program, which continues to actively recruit in most states. The program targets “at risk” youth who have dropped out of high school but are drug- and conviction-free. The program's goal is to give them a structured environment, accompanied by drug testing,

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which will lead ultimately to aGED. Although the program requires no conviction, many state juvenile courts undisputedly see it as a diversionary program. Not surprisingly, post-9/11 military recruitment has suffered and frustrated military expansion plans. The Army fell 8 percent short of its recruiting goal in fiscal year 2004-2005 (Associated Press, 2005), its poorest showing since 1979. The Army added recruiters and enlistment bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $90,000, depending on military occupational specialty (MOS).4 While the Army met its 2006 and 2007 recruiting goals through these tactics, the cost was enormous: 2006 enlistment bonuses totaled $1.03 billion, compared to $174 million in 2003 (Baldor, 2007). The Army is also experimenting with other pilot recruiting programs, such as the Army Advantage Fund wherein recruits receive up to $40,000 at the end of their first enlistment term to buy a house or small business (United States Army, 2008a). Recruiting efforts remain problematic in light of the ongoing conflict and the military's projected expansion from 473,000 to 547,000 soldiers by 2010 (BBC, 2007). Despite offender enlistment restrictions, the military utilizes enlistees with prior criminal records to meet enlistment quotas. In fiscal year 2006-2007, fifteen percent of all new recruits required such waivers, of which 13 percent had prior felony convictions (Powers, 2007).5 Most moral waiver enlistees have minor issues, such as six or more minor traffic offenses or a misdemeanor conviction. Overall, enlisted soldiers with felony records comprise just two percent of enlistees. Nevertheless, the increased reliance on moral waiver and offender enlistment has been questioned by policymakers (Marre, 2008). The small body of extant research on offender enlistee outcomes suggests that offender enlistment lowers recidivism compared to traditional alternatives but results in comparably worse enlistment outcomes. In a study of nearly 3000 paroled Army enlistees, Mattick (1960) found that: (1) military enlistment resulted in a fourfold decrease in parole failure compared to traditional supervision structures; (2) only 10.5 percent recidivated after serving eight years of military service. The study's findings may be inapplicable to modern military contexts, particularly since the military's increased professionalism and advanced technology, and America's increased reliance on incarceration, have created potential confounds. The dominant research observation outside criminal justice contexts, however, was that offender enlistees exhibited more disciplinary problems and were less likely to complete first enlistment periods (e.g., Connor, 1997; Flyer, 1995; Roff, 1974). Uggen and Staff (2001) also argue that work constitutes a turning point in criminal careers through structure and temporal absorption of opportunities to offend. Post-9/11 research suggested that offender enlistees produced outcomes comparable to, but slightly worse, than the general military population's. After high frequencies of criminal record waivers prompted concerns from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the U.S. Army (2008b) conducted an internal study in April 2008 (see Table 1).6 The Army's private study echoed earlier research findings: offender enlistees were 67.6 percent likelier to engage in misconduct, 41 percent likelier to be court-martialed, and 125 percent likelier to drop out due to alcohol rehabilitation failures. In the key indicator from the military's perspective, failure to complete enlistment term,

offender enlistees were 15 percent less likely to complete enlistment.7 These findings, however, were at least partially offset by favorable outcomes such as higher rates of reenlistment and faster promotion rates. Optimally, the military would be better served by soldiers with no pre-service arrest history since offender enlistment is associated with poorer outcomes overall. On the other hand, offender enlistee research indicated that the vast majority of offender enlistees make acceptable soldiers. As Colonel Kent M. Miller, the study's author (U.S. Army, 2008b), told the Associated Press (Baldor, 2008), “We believe that so far the return outweighs the risk.” Offender enlistment's crime prevention potential Intermediate sanctioning programs largely failed to utilize lessons from criminology in addressing offender control deficits; instead, like prisons, such approaches typically followed the Beccarian paradigm, focusing on offender rationality and deterrence while ignoring offender irrationality and emotions. In the 2002 American Society of Criminology address, Sherman (2003, p. 2) rejected the Beccarian approach in favor of a hybrid rationality model of emotionally intelligent justice (EIJ) wherein offender behavior results from “the interplay between rational and emotional causes of human behavior.” Accordingly, the justice system response accounts for an intervention's impact on both offender and victim emotions. EIJ is exemplified by restorative justice approaches, which attempt to repair harm and reduce offender recidivism by engaging emotions such as remorse, guilt, shame, empathy, and hope, while avoiding anger, humiliation, fear, and disgust (Sherman, 2003, p. 11). Any emotionally intelligent justice system (EIJS) faces a twofold challenge: 1) processing cases without invoking negative emotions in defendants, victims, and their associates, thereby increasing crime; and (2) lowering recidivism while avoiding the threat of incarceration (Sherman, 2003, p. 20). Offender enlistment has potential as an EIJ intervention in that it: (1) engages positive emotions in all criminal justice system participants; and (2) is predicted to lower recidivism. Engaging positive emotions Potentially, offender enlistment engages positive emotions. Enlistees would experience pride and respect in serving the country.8 Military service itself is designed to inculcate positive values and a sense of belonging. For example, the Army's official values are courage, honesty, integrity, loyalty, duty, respect, and selfless service. The military develops and enforces these norms through education and both informal and formal coercion. From intensive training at boot camp and subsequent occupational specialization training, as well as regular follow-up briefings and exercises, soldiers are told exactly how to behave. Informally, nonconformists are ridiculed, criticized, and/or ostracized; formally, nonconformists are subject to sanctions such as extra duties and non-judicial punishment (see e.g., Uniform Code of Military Justice, 2007). For many juvenile offenders, conformity leads to deviance; in military contexts, conformity, by contrast, leads to pro-social behavior. Severe deviance may result in adverse action to include court-martial and separation. Since offender enlistees become full soldiers no longer at risk of incarceration, offender enlistment minimizes negative emotions toward

Table 1 Results of Army's 2008 Internal Study (n = 276,231) Enlistment Type

Overall Enlistments by Type

Desertion Rate

Misconduct Rate

Court-martial Rate

Alcohol Rehabilitation Failure Rate

Reenlistment Rate

Promotion Time to SGT

Dismissal for Unsatisfactory Performance Rate

Failure to Complete Enlistment Rate

Waiver Non-waiver

6.50% 93.50%

4.26% 3.59%

5.95% 3.55%

1.00% 0.71%

0.27% 0.12%

28.48% 26.76%

34.7 mos. 39.0 mos.

0.26% 0.48%

19.50% 17.00%

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authority and society. Service without stigma reduces humiliation; alternatively, the offender's new career and the respect it garners promote feelings of self-esteem and belonging. By avoiding the threat of incarceration, offender enlistees serve without fear. Unlike most intermediate sanctioning, then, military enlistment is nonpunitive. Prior intermediate sanctioning programs’ reliance on punishment severity sought little more than deterring crime by dispensing “just deserts” upon a specific category of people, while discounting rehabilitation. As Lutze (2006) argued, “We have learned from boot camp prisons and from traditional prisons that punishment alone, however good we are at it, fails to reduce recidivism.… Rehabilitation within punitive environments will fail just as punishment without rehabilitation will fail” (p. 391). Offender emotions are but one side of the emotions equation in EIJS: ideally, victims, prosecutors, and all associates should be satisfied with offender enlistment. Military service may be problematic in that some victims may not be satisfied by offender enlistment. In the modern all-volunteer army, the military markets military service as an honor, a view which may lead victims to see offenders as receiving a reward. There is, unfortunately, a dearth of research on this subject. Offender enlistment, as here proposed, would require voluntary acknowledgment of an offender's harm and a responsibility to repay that harm, as well as consent of all parties. Requiring victim consent could help eliminate undesirable candidates for offender enlistment, though at the cost of eliminating some suitable enlistment candidates. Since there is a real possibility that prosecutors or other referring sources might provide a candidate for offender enlistment to rid themselves of a case, victim input could prove a useful check to the military by providing an alternative perspective.9 Moreover, requiring consent may help maintain public confidence in the military as an institution. Considering the real possibility of military casualties since 2003, there is good reason to believe that many victims will receive at least some satisfaction from offender enlistment, which typically involves relocation, obligation, service to the country, and risk. Predicting lower recidivism Offender enlistment seems likely to reduce recidivism, in that it modulates criminogenic variables, identified by several dominant criminological theories: (1) social bond theory (Hirschi, 1969); (2) life-course theory (Sampson & Laub, 1993); (3) social learning/ social structure theory (Akers, 1998), and (4) self-control theory (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) and variants thereof (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Burt, Simons & Simons, 2006).10 Each theory has been subject to extensive empirical testing and presents known correlates of criminal behavior. The emerging view of crime is that it, like cancer, is a complex multi-causal phenomenon or set of phenomena, possibly sui generis by type, and insusceptible to single-variable explanations or general theories; therefore, in considering individual criminality, offender enlistment's value is optimally evaluated by an integrated criminological approach. Assuming that these four theories have identified actual causes of criminality, an individual's criminality is related to either a rational stake in conformity (social bonds), an individual personality trait (self-control), and/or exposure to criminogenic conditions (social structure or socialization), which collectively will be referred to as offender internal and external control deficits. It is argued that offender enlistment modifies socialization and social structure opportunities, which can at least partially mediate these deficits. Hirschi (1969) hypothesized that individuals with weak attachments to society will be more likely to engage in deviant behavior. These attachments, or social bonds, comprised four elements: (1) attachment: an individual's feelings of connection to and concern for others and their feelings; (2) commitment: an individual's investment in time and resources in social activities and institutions; (3) involvement: an individual's time spent in conventional activities;

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and (4) belief: an individual's belief in the moral validity of social norms. Offender enlistment potentially increases offender's social bonds across these four dimensions: (1) The military structure provides a sense of teamwork and belonging and enforces group participation; (2) Enlistee effort in military service, and its potential monetary rewards, should increase the enlistee's rational stake in conformity; (3) The military's time demands should ensure a high proportion of time engaged in conventional activities, and (4) the military's pro-social values, emphasis on obedience, and conformist pressures potentially could instill a sense of belief in the validity of social norms. Similar to social bond theory, life-course theory (Laub & Sampson, 2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993, 1996) hypothesizes that criminal desistance is facilitated and sustained by increasing an individual's social bond. Specifically, however, life-course theory emphasizes that, as individuals advance through life, they often experience age-graded “turning points,” which often redirect individuals out of previously established behavior patterns (see Wright, Carter, & Cullen, 2005) and either strengthen or weaken an individual's ties to society. These events can be marriages, jobs, incarcerations, or entry into the military (Sampson & Laub, 1993). Following life-course theory, incarceration alone is suboptimal, resulting in the weakening of offender social bonds; minimally, incarceration should be followed with aftercare via programs to assist offenders in reestablishing bonds (Laub & Sampson, 2003). Additionally, Caspi and Moffitt (1993) point out that research on the learning-theory model of punishment implies that punishment is unproductive for reducing motivated behavior unless some other behavior is presented. For that reason, they theorize that change within the life course as a result of military enlistment for people with delinquent backgrounds, often results when earlier responses or behaviors are enthusiastically discouraged while at the same time clear direction is provided about how to behave accordingly. In this regard, the military is often seen as a total institution as it requires a new way of thinking and behaving for prior criminal offenders. There is a known correlation between military service and desistance from crime among youths, many of whom have had delinquent pasts (Bouffard, 2003; Mattick, 1960; Sampson & Laub, 1993). Unfortunately, there is little research which had attempted to examine the influence of military service on later criminal behavior. Socialization into military life has substantial potential as a hook to promote cognitive change (Elder & Caspi, 1990; Giordano, Cernkovich, & Rudolph, 2002). This cognitive change often begins with the “knifing off” of past experiences. Within the military, previous personalities are discouraged, including social stigmas such as bad grades and criminal records (Janowitz, 1978). In that regard, the military has the ability to provide a new set of social opportunities and is one of the few social institutions with the capability to initiate long-term change. This change begins immediately when recruits enter basic training, whereat they are separated from their past environments and placed in highly structured environments and given clear direction as to how they are expected to behave. They are forced into standardized uniforms, equality, reduced individualization, and receive rewards based on group achievement. In short, the military makes any acknowledgement of prior identities of self irrelevant; since individuals are denied the possibility to resist this change, they must conform to the group (Elder & Caspi, 1990). Learning to change in the military is but one example of what Caspi and Moffitt (1993) refer to as secondary socialization, wherein an individual is inducted into a new segment of society. The individual thereby acquires new role-specific behaviors and new identities while abandoning old criminal behaviors and identities. Offender enlistment is particularly promising in that it routinely relocates individuals to different states or countries and provides a new peer group. These changes are recalled in the memories of several veterans who stated: “I got a lot of satisfaction of being able to go through boot camp. Gone was all my old disciplinary rebellion that I had in high school,” while

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another points out that “the Army was a place to be for awhile, a place for sorting out self” (Elder, 1986, p. 236). According to Mattick (1960), military service provides a setting which is altogether favorable for the rehabilitation of prisoners. In social disorganization theory, Shaw and McKay (1942) hypothesize that crime is a normal individual response to abnormal social conditions (i.e., the classic social disorganization variables of heterogeneity, transiency, and family stability). In traditional criminal justice contexts, offenders are released back into the same criminogenic conditions. Offender enlistment holds promise because it forcibly relocates offenders to new non-criminogenic environments. Historically, enlistment in the Armed Forces has been an attractive option for young people needing direction. Recruits have disproportionately represented underprivileged backgrounds, perhaps due to the fact that the armed forces provide such individuals with positive self-images and role models, assertiveness training, and group support (Elder, 1986). In social learning theory, Akers (1998) hypothesized that individual criminality is learned via positive and negative reinforcements for specific behaviors. The models for these behaviors and the reinforcements thereof are shaped by peer groups. While traditional criminal justice interventions attempt to reinforce prosocial behaviors and discourage antisocial behaviors, individuals are typically released to their original environments, there to encounter their original peer groups which reinforce antisocial behaviors. Potentially, offender enlistment provides a new peer group with positive reinforcement for pro-social behaviors and punishment for anti-social behaviors. In self-control theory, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) hypothesized that the unitary cause of crime and analogous deviant behavior was low self-control, characterized by six personality traits: impulsivity, lack of diligence and persistence, risk-seeking, preference for physical activity over introspection or dialogue, insensitivity to others, low frustration tolerance and tendency toward confrontation in problem-solving. Once formed by early adolescence, low self-control is a permanent, stable behavioral characteristic, the effect of which may be mediated by social structure, which creates differential opportunities for crime. The key implication for offender enlistment is that reducing deviant behavior of low self-control individuals may be accomplished by increased structure and supervision. Some self-control theorists (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Burt, Simons, & Simons, 2006) contend that self-control is not invariant but may be developed, or depleted, over time, like a muscle. If self-control muscle theorists are correct, offender enlistment's discipline and structure could lead to enhanced individual self-control. From an integrated perspective, then, offender enlistment seems a promising incarceration alternative, one capable of mediating offender internal and external control deficits. Since individuals tend to age out of crime (Mulvey et al., 2004), offender enlistment, at the very least, offers a means to structure and incapacitate offenders during peak offending life periods while channeling energies into conventional activities. Note, however, that active-duty military service, as here described, is but one possible type of offender enlistment after basic training. Reserve military service would allow an offender to remain at home but would still involve military supervision, albeit less intensive. Typically, a reserve soldier serves one weekend a month and approximately two weeks each year, state and federal mobilizations notwithstanding. Additionally, such a soldier is drug-tested and routinely screened for mental and physical health. For purposes of offender enlistment, the primary advantage of reserve service is cost savings in that reserve soldiers are much cheaper to employ. The primary disadvantage of such service is that enlistees may be returned to their original, potentially criminogenic environments. Regardless, however, both active and reserve military components would provide their own forms of aftercare. Barriers to offender enlistment The entire concept of military enlistment as an alternative to incarceration is based on two partners, the criminal justice system and

the military. Offender enlistment could never be thoroughly implemented without acceptance by the military. Unfortunately, offender enlistment faces numerous obstacles implementation, such as concerns for public policy, unit cohesion, security clearances, absence of screening mechanisms, and costs. Public policy-wise, offender enlistment is contrary to the military's norm of volunteer service. In the first decade of the all-volunteer military, the military was not highly regarded, and, in many senses, incapable of performing all missions because it could not attract the middle class. The move to a more technical force mandated a move towards the middle class in order to operate systems. The military's reduction in force size required a systemic change in military bureaucracy, focusing on force projection and reducing the overhead positions in the military. Therefore, increasing service member quality was necessary to reduce the demands of military justice, incarceration, and continued enlistment of sub-performing individuals. Military attorneys spend less time in military justice issues and more on administrative matters than in the past draft military. Most military posts do not have an active incarceration system (“the brig”) and now contract for incarceration with local facilities. The Department of Defense has consolidated its long-term incarceration facilities rather than each service maintaining a separate prison system. Administrative separation is a regular alternative to military justice, and an active drug screening program in all the branches of the military (to include the reserves) is a primary source of adverse actions. Therefore, in leaving the involuntary servitude of the draft for the all-volunteer concept, the military has shed overhead for a large military justice system. Accepting those with criminal conduct may reverse this trend heavily relied upon by the modern military. The military would likely be reluctant to accept offenders associated with drug-related crimes. The investment of the military per individual in the first year of enlistment greatly exceeds the cost of incarceration. The adverse separation of individuals for drugs represents a tremendous waste of limited funds and resources. Most military operational specialties demand a no-tolerance policy of drug or alcohol abuse. Further, most military career require the need for security clearances, and drug usage could preclude any clearance. Deployments to places such as Afghanistan, source of most of the world's heroin, create further resistance to accepting those with drugrelated backgrounds. Therefore, a large portion of those that may best benefit from EIJS are precluded immediately. Further reluctance by the military is the potential breakdown of unit cohesion. The military is most dependent on teamwork and confidence built on a high degree of trust. Particularly in the junior ranks and during deployments, military personnel live in barracks where there is ample opportunity for theft. Any violation of trust in such close quarters impairs unit cohesion and undermines the necessary teamwork. Allowing individuals that may violate the extreme trust necessary to military conditions to enlist evokes great concern about poisoning units. The modern military is reliant on the ability of individual soldiers to make rational split-second decisions. Those that are prone to rash acts of violence or mob mentality undermine the ability of the military to provide an effective fighting force. Mass media attention and actual modern tactics create great scrutiny at even the lowest level of the use of force. In such an environment, the decision to not use force is as important as the willingness to use force. Those with the inability to control rash acts or immediately prone to violence are not appropriate for the combat arms. Most military occupational specialties today require a valid security clearance. In addition to criminal records, the screening process reviews credit history. The logic behind such a process is to identify those that may be unable to manage finances or resist bribery and therefore potentially compromise security. Enlistees who are prone to dishonesty or financial irresponsibility are security threats in that they may easily profit from the sale of classified material. Therefore, the

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military is unlikely to endorse offender enlistment without extreme measures to protect the system. Certain offenses such as drug abuse, theft, and extreme violence undermine the needs of the modern military and the ability to maintain a cohesive unit. At least in a limited sense, offender enlistment concepts already are utilized on a limited basis as a means to procure service members by eliminating barriers to service. The Youth ChalleNGe Program has been in existence for more than a decade, and provides a means for atrisk youth to gain from a structured environment and earn their GED, and many enrollees then pursue military careers. The active military is opening facilities that allow enlistees to get their GED prior to basic training and become qualified for military service. The Army has an academy to qualify high school graduates with intensive study to raise their scores for acceptance to the US Military Academy. Post-release offender enlistment programs can be implemented without any changes to existing military policy. Indiana's Future Soldiers program, as mentioned, complies with existing military recruiting policies in that there is no criminal-justice-related consideration for enlistment, nor is there direct or indirect involvement in criminal justice dispositions by recruiters. By contrast, diversionary or pre-release offender enlistment programs would require exceptions to military recruiting regulations and new procedures. Recruiting regulation exceptions would have to be approved at high federal levels. For example, making exceptions to or modifying Army recruiting regulations would require approval by the Department of the Army. As a threshold eligibility criterion, qualifying offenses would need to be identified, a task which would itself require objective criteria to apply to different state codes. Next, the military would have to enter into a partnership with particular states to allow modification or release of pending charges to allow the individual to enlist.11 The military would need a means to screen potential program participants for suitability. Such a screening process would both reduce costs by limiting program participation and quarantine potential bad enlistees from the general military population. The military may be concerned either that potential enlistees want to serve solely to avoid incarceration or prosecutors or referring sources view the military as a way to eliminate cases. One such method might involve a pre-basic academy, whereby individuals are screened before release into basic combat training. The academy could serve as a clearing house prior to basic training, removing those unfit for service. Screening may include a psychiatric evaluation to identify disqualifying conditions, such as anti-social disorders, violent tendencies, and/or chemical imbalances. Likewise, a psychiatric evaluation could help determine whether an individual would benefit from new military peer associations. Completion of such a program could grant the individual a certificate of completion, and the military could elect, from those completing such a course, who may be accepted into the military and into particular specialties. Absent such a screening process, the military is unlikely to endorse large-scale offender enlistment. Perhaps the biggest hurdle to offender enlistment is uncertain military costs. Assuming an offender enlistment program could be initiated, states would expect to save considerable amounts by avoiding incarceration and/or other criminal justice supervision expenses. The military, however, might bear additional costs by enlisting suboptimal soldiers. While recent offender enlistee studies are promising, it remains unclear exactly what system costs would ensue from increased utilization of offender enlistment programs. There is a clear need for a cost-benefit study of felon offender enlistment outcomes which balances both state and federal costs of recidivism, military training, and enlistment retention. Despite uncertainties, however, the military might save costs from offender enlistment in that it might be able to waive enlistment bonuses thereby, presuming that an offender entered the military in consideration for a favorable criminal justice outcome. Incentives and system failure costs could be flexibly structured to benefit the military. For

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example, an enlistment bonus entitlement (if any) might be paid only upon completion of enlistment,12 and any enlistment failures would lead to transfers back to the enlistee's originating state. Such an arrangement would avoid the military's budgeting for increased longterm incarceration expenses. Moreover, increases in enlistments in general might allow the military to both reduce the number and average cost of enlistee bonus payments overall. Conclusion Pre-release and post-release offender enlistment programs offer viable emotionally intelligent justice system alternatives to traditional criminal justice supervision. Potentially, these programs could reduce recidivism, while offering overall cost savings. Implementation of prerelease offender enlistment is fraught with implementation barriers. Despite the frequent use of moral waivers, current military policy prohibits pre-release offender enlistment. Moreover, the military itself is wary of the public relations implications of an Army composed of high numbers of offender enlistees. In preparing this study, the authors contacted United States Army Recruiting Command, in Ft. Knox, Kentucky, as well as the Department of the Army. The general response was that the Army, at its highest levels, was not interested in pre-release offender enlistment. Army internal research results, though, may be a harbinger of forthcoming change. For many, the military is both their most promising and only viable option. Irwin and Cressey (1962) argued that extended periods of incarceration often lead to a prisoner experiencing an institutionalization process wherein the convict learns prison survival skills, which are socially elsewhere. Therefore, many prisoners leave prison socially crippled and alienated with no social capital. Moreover, they understand that they will be reentering a society that views them as contemptible parasites (Austin & Irwin, 2002). As an added benefit, offender enlistment may serve as a means for advancing the theoretical development of emotionally intelligent justice intervention, which is still an emerging field. A notable gap in offender enlistment research is a modern, systematic study of offender enlistment recidivism effects, the results of which may lend support for emotionally intelligent justice interventions. While the Army is the service most likely to need and benefit from offender enlistees, research is needed on placement which is attentive to the recruiting and cultural realities of the various branches of service. Moreover, evaluations of offender enlistments may illumine the types of offenders and service conditions most conducive to favorable outcomes and system cost savings. Notes 1. This iteration of forms is not intended to be exhaustive, as combining or altering enlistment types may allow for different approaches. For example, offenders might enlist during completion of a sentence and have the sentence vacated upon completion. 2. These regulations will be discussed elsewhere. 3. Such an enlistment occurred during wartime conditions and was not motivated by alternative sentencing rationales. 4. The applicability of the high-range enlistment bonuses is unlikely in offender enlistment contexts. Many of the particularly high-dollar bonuses went to those with high Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores, which may preclude many offender enlistees. 5. While what constitutes a felony varies by state, military regulations typically have their own distinct classifications. The Army, for example, lists specific offenses as felonies, rather than relying on state classifications. 6. Upon request, the Department of the Army refused to provide a copy of this internal study; as a consequence, the results reported here cannot be properly criticized, nor can its exact methodologies be known. 7. The military is more likely to separate soldiers than court-martial them. 8. Military personnel would resist characterizing military service as repaying a debt, a view which is commonly held in correctional contexts. In military parlance, as well as current political climate, military service is a “responsibility” in its basic context (draft military), and in its idealist approach it is a privilege to serve (allvolunteer). Any connotation that military service is a means or repaying a debt to society will be met with absolute opposition by the military.

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9. Screening mechanisms will be addressed in the Barriers to Enlistment section. 10. Due to space limitations and the commonness of these theories, only theoretically relevant aspects of these theories will be discussed. 11. Complicating such an agreement is the difficulty of processing program failures, who may need to return to their states for prosecution years after commission of the underlying offense. Such a belated release may create statute of limitations or due process concerns. 12. At present, most enlistments are for eight years. The bonus is paid incrementally after certain enlistment milestones, such as training completion, time increments, or service completion.

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