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Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign 
Affairs, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of 
Representatives: 

United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO: 

September 2010: 

Military Personnel: 

Sustained Leadership and Oversight Needed to Improve DOD's Prevention 
and Treatment of Domestic Abuse: 

GAO-10-923: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-10-923, a report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on 
National Security and Foreign Affairs, Committee on Oversight and 
Government Reform, House of Representatives. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

In 2001, the Deputy Secretary of Defense stated that domestic violence 
will not be tolerated in the Department of Defense (DOD). Despite this 
posture, DOD’s clinical database indicates that 8,223 incidents met 
criteria for domestic abuse in fiscal year 2009. However, because this 
database includes only cases reported to military clinical offices, it 
does not represent all cases. In response to a congressional request, 
GAO evaluated whether DOD is able to determine the effectiveness of 
its domestic abuse efforts. To conduct this review, GAO reviewed 
legislative requirements and DOD guidance, analyzed domestic abuse 
data, and interviewed officials involved in domestic abuse prevention 
and treatment and persons eligible to receive services at five 
military bases. 

What GAO Found: 

DOD has taken some actions to prevent and treat domestic abuse in 
response to recommendations made by the Defense Task Force on Domestic 
Violence in 2001 through 2003 and by GAO in a 2006 report. However, 
DOD has no oversight framework with goals, milestones, and metrics 
with which to determine the effectiveness of its efforts. This issue 
is complicated by uncertainty regarding the completeness of DOD’s data 
on domestic abuse. In 2007, DOD issued guidance on military protective 
orders after GAO had found that its lack of guidance had resulted in 
inconsistent practices. However, DOD closed its Family Violence Policy 
Office in 2007, which had staff dedicated to overseeing the 
implementation of recommendations made by the Defense Task Force, 
after DOD had taken action on some key recommendations. At that time, 
the specific responsibilities of that office for overseeing 
implementation of the remaining Task Force recommendations were not 
reassigned, although overall oversight responsibility remained with 
the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. DOD 
guidance assigns many domestic abuse-related responsibilities to this 
office, including responsibility for developing DOD’s domestic abuse 
instruction and ensuring compliance. GAO found the following examples 
in which having sustained leadership attention and an oversight 
framework would have helped guide DOD in obtaining information that 
would allow it to fully manage its efforts and determine their 
effectiveness: 

* Significant DOD guidance has been in draft since 2006. As a result, 
the services are anticipating ways to implement the draft guidance, 
which contains, among other things, new guidelines for the services’ 
clinical treatment and evaluation boards, without finalized guidance. 

* The database intended to satisfy legislative requirements enacted in 
2000 continues to provide incomplete data, and DOD still collects 
domestic abuse data in two databases. In 2006, GAO reported on data 
discrepancies in these databases and recommended that they be 
reconciled. This recommendation remains open, and those problems 
continue today. Because DOD cannot provide accurate numbers of 
domestic abuse incidents, it cannot analyze trends. 

* It is DOD policy to target families most at risk of domestic abuse, 
but DOD has not defined goals for its efforts or metrics with which to 
measure progress. DOD collects only information on gender, rank, age, 
and substance use. Without information on other factors, such as 
length and number of deployments, DOD will be unable to fully analyze 
risk factors. During GAO’s site visits, these factors were routinely 
mentioned. 

* DOD lacks metrics for measuring the effectiveness of its awareness 
campaigns. As a result, it does not know how to direct its resources 
most effectively. 

Without sustained leadership and an oversight framework, DOD will 
remain unable to assess the effectiveness of its efforts to prevent 
and treat domestic abuse. 

What GAO Recommends: 

GAO recommends that DOD finalize guidance on how the services are to 
comply with DOD policies and develop an oversight framework to guide 
its efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse that includes 
collecting data on contributing factors and establishing metrics to 
determine the effectiveness of DOD’s awareness campaigns. In 
commenting on a draft of this report, DOD generally concurred with 
GAO’s recommendations. 

View [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-923] or key 
components. For more information, contact Brenda S. Farrell at (202) 
512-3604 or farrellb@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Background: 

DOD Has Made Some Positive Changes but Has No Oversight Framework to 
Determine the Effectiveness of DOD's Efforts to Prevent and Treat 
Domestic Abuse: 

Conclusions: 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology: 

Appendix II: DOD Actions Taken in Response to GAO's 2006 
Recommendations: 

Appendix III: Incidents of Domestic Abuse as Reported in the Family 
Advocacy Program Central Registry: 

Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Defense: 

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

Tables: 

Table 1: Discussion Group Types by Service: 

Table 2: GAO's Recommendations in 2006 Report on Domestic Violence and 
DOD Response: 

Table 3: DOD's Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry Record of 
Incidents of Domestic Abuse: 

Figures: 

Figure 1: Organization Chart Showing the Offices Involved in Managing 
DOD's Prevention and Treatment of Domestic Abuse: 

Figure 2: Military or Nonmilitary Status and Rank of Substantiated 
Perpetrators of Domestic Abuse Reported to DOD's Family Advocacy 
Program's Central Registry for Fiscal Year 2009: 

Figure 3: Age of Substantiated Domestic Abuse Victims in DOD's Family 
Advocacy Program's Central Registry for Fiscal Year 2009: 

Figure 4: DOD's Family Advocacy Program Central Registry Record of the 
Rates of Domestic Abuse Incidents per Thousand Married Couples: 

Abbreviations: 

DOD: Department of Defense: 

OSD: Office of the Secretary of Defense: 

USD (P&R): Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 
Readiness: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548: 

September 22, 2010: 

The Honorable John F. Tierney:
Chairman:
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:
House of Representatives: 

Dear Mr. Chairman: 

In 2001, the Secretary of Defense noted in a memorandum to all senior 
Department of Defense (DOD) leaders that domestic violence will not be 
tolerated in DOD. He stated that "We must make every possible effort 
to establish effective programs to prevent domestic violence but when 
it does occur, we have a duty to protect the victims and take 
appropriate action to hold offenders accountable."[Footnote 1] 
National estimates indicate that approximately 1.5 million women and 
835,000 men in the United States are physically assaulted or raped by 
intimate partners annually. DOD's clinical database indicates that 
8,223 reported incidents were determined to meet the criteria for 
domestic abuse in fiscal year 2009. However, because this database 
includes only cases reported to military offices that provide clinical 
services, it does not represent all cases of domestic abuse that occur 
throughout DOD. 

Congress, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 
2000, required the Secretary of Defense to (1) establish a central 
database of information on domestic violence incidents involving 
members of the armed forces[Footnote 2] and (2) establish a Department 
of Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence (Task Force).[Footnote 3] 
The law charged the Task Force with establishing a strategic plan that 
would allow DOD to more effectively address domestic violence matters 
within the military. In fiscal years 2001, 2002, and 2003, the Task 
Force issued three reports containing almost 200 recommendations to 
improve the safety of victims, accountability for offenders, 
coordination among support-service providers, and recording of data on 
cases of domestic abuse.[Footnote 4] To coordinate implementation of 
these recommendations, DOD established a Family Violence Policy Office 
in January 2003. In 2007, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for 
Military Community and Family Policy closed this office after DOD had 
taken actions in response to what it reported to be 82 percent of the 
recommendations made by the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence. 
However, key recommendations, such as the longstanding one to maintain 
a database of the incidents of domestic violence, have still not been 
completed. 

In 2006, we issued a report stating, among other things, that DOD had 
taken action on a majority of the Defense Task Force's 
recommendations.[Footnote 5] For example, we reported that while DOD 
had established a domestic violence central database, the database was 
not yet fully operational and did not contain complete information 
about reported incidents of domestic violence. We also reported that 
until the database had complete and accurate data, DOD could not fully 
understand the scope of the problem.[Footnote 6] The National Defense 
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 required us to review and 
assess the progress DOD had made in implementing recommendations 
contained in our 2006 report.[Footnote 7] To satisfy that mandate, we 
issued a report in April 2010 stating that DOD had addressed one of 
the recommendations in our 2006 report to improve its efforts to 
prevent and treat domestic violence and taken steps toward 
implementing two more, but it had not taken any actions on four other 
recommendations.[Footnote 8] (See appendix II for a summary of the 
status of DOD actions taken in response to GAO's recommendations, as 
it appeared in the April 2010 report.) 

DOD guidance defines domestic abuse as domestic violence or a pattern 
of behavior resulting in emotional/psychological abuse, economic 
control, and/or interference with personal liberty that is directed 
toward a person of the opposite sex who is (a) a current or former 
spouse, (b) a person with whom the abuser shares a child in common, or 
(c) a current or former intimate partner with whom the abuser shares 
or has shared a common domicile. Domestic violence is defined as any 
offense listed in the United States Code, the Uniform Code of Military 
Justice, or state law that involves the use, attempted use, or 
threatened use of force or violence when that offense is directed 
against a person of the opposite sex who meets the same criteria as 
defined for domestic abuse. Domestic violence also includes the 
violation of a lawful order issued for the protection of a person of 
the opposite sex as defined above.[Footnote 9] 

You asked us to report on DOD's prevention and treatment of domestic 
abuse. Specifically, this report evaluates the extent to which DOD is 
able to determine the effectiveness of its domestic abuse policies and 
procedures. 

To evaluate the extent to which DOD is able to determine the 
effectiveness of its domestic abuse policies and procedures, we 
reviewed laws, DOD-and service-level guidance, official documents, and 
available data on domestic abuse. To assess the reliability of the 
Defense Incident-Based Reporting System and the Family Advocacy 
Program's Central Registry, we reviewed documents and interviewed 
knowledgeable officials about the systems' quality controls for 
ensuring the data are complete and accurate. In addition, we obtained 
samples of data provided from each system. We determined that the 
Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry data were sufficiently 
reliable for our purposes--which were to (1) identify the incidence of 
domestic abuse cases reported to Family Advocacy Program offices and 
(2) describe the demographic factors that may contribute to domestic 
abuse in cases reported to the Family Advocacy Program offices. We 
determined that the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System data were 
not sufficiently reliable for these purposes (see appendix III). We 
expanded on work we had underway to satisfy a congressional mandate to 
report on progress DOD had made to implement recommendations we had 
made in a 2006 report.[Footnote 10] We also interviewed knowledgeable 
officials and submitted formal questions about DOD's efforts to 
prevent and treat domestic abuse to the Office of the Under Secretary 
of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. That office provided us with 
written answers representing DOD's official position. We visited five 
military installations in the United States, where we conducted 69 
discussion groups with military and civilian personnel, including 
officials from the Family Advocacy Program, law enforcement personnel, 
enlisted servicemembers, and victim advocates. Further details about 
our scope and methodology can be found in appendix I. 

We conducted this performance audit from July 2009 to August 2010 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

Background: 

DOD Organization and Responsibilities for Preventing and Treating 
Domestic Abuse: 

Current DOD guidance assigns responsibilities for managing DOD's 
efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse to, among others, the 
Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and the 
Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 
Readiness.[Footnote 11] For example, DOD Instruction 6400.06 charges 
the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness with 
developing and maintaining that instruction as well as ensuring 
compliance. Additionally, DOD Directive 6400.1 assigns a number of 
responsibilities related to management of the Family Advocacy Program, 
which is the primary vehicle for DOD's efforts to prevent and treat 
domestic abuse, to the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for 
Personnel and Readiness. A DOD manual, issued under the authority of 
DOD Directive 6400.1, assigns certain responsibilities to the Director 
of the Defense Manpower Data Center, which maintains two databases 
containing information on domestic abuse: (1) the Family Advocacy 
Program's Central Registry, which contains data on clinical cases 
involving domestic abuse; and (2) the Defense Incident-Based Reporting 
System, which contains data on domestic violence cases that involve 
military law enforcement. The Defense Human Resource Activity's Office 
of Law Enforcement Policy and Support has a role in managing the 
Defense Incident-Based Reporting System. (See figure 1 for an 
organizational chart showing the offices involved in managing DOD's 
domestic abuse activities.) 

Figure 1: Organization Chart Showing the Offices Involved in Managing 
DOD's Prevention and Treatment of Domestic Abuse: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

Top level: 
* Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: 

Second level, reporting to Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel 
and Readiness: 
* Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 
Readiness: 

Third level, reporting to Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense 
for Personnel and Readiness: 
* Defense Human Resource; 
- Law Enforcement Policy and Support; 
- Defense Manpower Data Center; 
* Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family 
Policy; 
- Family Advocacy Program. 

Source: GAO’s presentation of DOD information. 

[End of figure] 

In August 2004, DOD issued Directive 6400.1, which updated guidance 
addressing DOD's Family Advocacy Program. In this directive, DOD 
states that it is DOD policy to prevent child and domestic abuse 
through public awareness, education, and family support programs 
provided by the Family Advocacy Program and through standardized 
programs and activities for military families who have been identified 
as at risk of experiencing child abuse or domestic abuse. It goes on 
to state that it is DOD policy to promote the early identification and 
coordinated, comprehensive intervention, assessment, and support to 
persons identified as victims of child or domestic abuse. According to 
the directive, it is also DOD policy to provide assessment, 
rehabilitation, and treatment for persons alleged to have committed 
child and domestic abuse. 

This directive assigns a number of responsibilities for elements of 
the Family Advocacy Program to the Office of the Principal Deputy 
Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Among the 
responsibilities assigned to this office are to develop a coordinated 
approach to family advocacy issues; coordinate the management of this 
program with similar medical and social programs servicing military 
families; collect and analyze Family Advocacy Program data; assist the 
military services in their efforts to establish, develop, and maintain 
comprehensive Family Advocacy Programs; collaborate with the DOD 
components to establish Family Advocacy Program standards; and monitor 
and evaluate existing Family Advocacy Programs at the headquarters 
level. 

In July 2005, DOD issued Manual 6400.1-M1, under the authority of 
Directive 6400.1, which addresses reporting requirements associated 
with domestic abuse. The manual assigns responsibility to the Under 
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness or his or her 
designee for reviewing information collected, analyzed, and reported 
by the military services on domestic abuse that is captured in the 
Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry, which is an automated, 
incident-based reporting system that includes the number of reports 
each military installation's Family Advocacy Program Office responds 
to (i.e., "cases to be worked"). The Defense Manpower Data Center, 
located in the Defense Human Resource Activity, is DOD's central 
repository for data, and according to the manual, the Defense Manpower 
Data Center is responsible for receiving data provided by Family 
Advocacy Program managers of the DOD components and maintaining these 
data. The Defense Manpower Data Center is also responsible for 
assisting in the creation of statistical reports of domestic abuse 
from the Central Registry, and according to the DOD manual that 
addresses the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System, for matching 
Family Advocacy Program Central Registry data with data from the 
Defense Incident-Based Reporting System to satisfy reportable 
information requirements.[Footnote 12] While the Data Center would be 
responsible for producing domestic violence-related reports based on 
information in the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System, there are 
currently no reporting requirements making it necessary for them to do 
so. As noted elsewhere in this report, these two databases have not 
been matched recently to determine whether they overlap or could be 
combined. Data reliability issues are addressed elsewhere and in the 
scope and methodology section of this report (see appendix I). 

In August 2007, DOD issued guidance more broadly addressing its 
domestic abuse policies and procedures, DOD Instruction 6400.06, 
Domestic Abuse Involving DoD Military and Certain Affiliated 
Personnel. This guidance assigns responsibility to the Under Secretary 
of Defense for Personnel and Readiness for collaborating with the 
military services to establish procedures and programs consistent with 
its instruction and maintaining a central DOD database of domestic 
violence incidents. The Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Military 
Community and Family Policy) is assigned responsibility for, among 
other things, issuing standardized guidelines to the secretaries of 
the military departments for developing a coordinated approach to 
addressing domestic abuse and monitoring compliance with the DOD 
instruction. 

Another office in the Office of the Principal Deputy Under Secretary 
of Defense for Personnel and Readiness has a lead role in managing the 
database of law enforcement incidents involving servicemembers, which 
is called the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System. The Law 
Enforcement Policy and Support Office, which is located in the Defense 
Human Resource Activity, is involved with policy areas related to 
operation of this system. 

DOD Maintains Two Separate Databases Containing Information on Cases 
of Domestic Abuse: 

Historically, DOD has maintained two separate databases on domestic 
abuse. DOD uses the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System, which was 
created following the enactment of the Uniform Federal Crime Reporting 
Act of 1988, to capture criminal incidents of domestic violence. DOD 
maintains a second database--the Family Advocacy Program's Central 
Registry, which was created in 1994--to capture information about 
domestic abuse cases reported to the Family Advocacy Program. The 
Central Registry contains cases that were reported to the Family 
Advocacy Program, regardless of whether or not law enforcement was 
involved. Conversely, the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System 
contains information about domestic violence cases that involved law 
enforcement, regardless of whether or not they were reported to the 
Family Advocacy Program. In 1999, Congress directed the Secretary of 
Defense to create a central database of domestic violence incidents 
involving servicemembers and to include information about the actions 
taken by command authorities in response to these incidents.[Footnote 
13] We reported in 2006 that, in an effort to satisfy the legislation, 
DOD established the central domestic violence database within its 
Defense Incident-Based Reporting System. However, we also noted that 
the database did not contain complete information about reported 
incidents of domestic violence; nor did it contain information from 
the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry.[Footnote 14] 

DOD Has Made Some Positive Changes but Has No Oversight Framework to 
Determine the Effectiveness of DOD's Efforts to Prevent and Treat 
Domestic Abuse: 

DOD has made some positive changes to its efforts to prevent and treat 
domestic abuse. However, it is unable to determine the effectiveness 
of these efforts because the department lacks an oversight framework 
to guide the continued implementation of its efforts. In April 2010, 
we reported on the progress DOD had made in implementing the 
recommendations in our 2006 report.[Footnote 15] More recently, in 
response to our April 2010 report, DOD stated that it intended to 
develop an action plan that outlines initiatives it will take to 
further respond to our 2006 recommendations. Additional plans for 
further improvements are contained in draft guidance that DOD 
anticipates issuing in 2010. If implemented as drafted, this guidance 
should provide some important management tools for DOD to use in 
standardizing its efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse and in 
collecting data that will help it analyze the effectiveness of these 
efforts. However, because DOD currently lacks an oversight framework 
with clear objectives, milestones, performance measures, and criteria 
for measuring progress, it does not have the information necessary to 
evaluate the effectiveness of its efforts to prevent and treat 
domestic abuse or to make fact-based improvements. This issue is 
compounded by uncertainty regarding the completeness of DOD's data on 
domestic abuse. While it may be difficult to measure the effectiveness 
of DOD's efforts to prevent domestic abuse, our prior work has shown 
that determining how to measure progress when implementing change is 
critical to making improvements.[Footnote 16] At present, the Office 
of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (1) has 
limited visibility over the number of incidents of domestic abuse DOD-
wide, including both those contained in its law enforcement and 
clinical databases; (2) does not systematically collect data on 
factors that may contribute to domestic abuse; and (3) cannot 
determine how effective its awareness campaigns are. Also, though DOD 
officials and servicemembers stated that domestic abuse has a negative 
effect on readiness, we recognize that measuring the effect would be 
difficult. 

DOD Has Made Some Positive Changes and Plans Future Improvements When 
It Issues Draft Guidance: 

In April 2010, we reported that DOD had addressed one of the seven 
recommendations in our 2006 report and taken steps to implement two 
others. (See appendix II for more details on our recommendations and 
actions DOD has taken to implement them.) For example, in 2007, it 
issued DOD Instruction 6400.06, which clarified its guidance on clergy 
confidentiality. In responding to a portion of a second 
recommendation, DOD also clarified its guidance on military protective 
orders. In our 2006 report, we had stated that DOD's lack of guidance 
on military protective orders had resulted in inconsistent practices 
among the services in how they distributed copies of these orders. 
More recently, in response to our April 2010 report, DOD stated that 
it intended to develop an action plan that outlines initiatives it 
will take to further respond to our 2006 recommendations. DOD has also 
provided us with an updated matrix summarizing actions it has taken in 
response to recommendations made by the Defense Task Force on Domestic 
Violence.[Footnote 17] DOD also has guidance that has been in draft 
since 2006 and includes significant guidance to the services.[Footnote 
18] For example, Volume 3 of the manual that DOD has in draft sets out 
a process for determining whether allegations of abuse meet the 
criteria to be entered into the services' Family Advocacy Program 
Central Registry, DOD's database of clinical cases, while Volume 4 of 
the draft manual prescribes guidelines for Family Advocacy Program 
assessment, clinical rehabilitative treatment, and ongoing monitoring 
of individuals who have been reported to the Family Advocacy Program. 
While we believe that many of the provisions in the current version of 
the draft guidance may represent important improvements to its efforts 
to prevent and treat domestic abuse, DOD has still not finalized and 
issued this guidance. It is not clear why the guidance has been in 
draft since 2006. During our field visits, we found that all services 
were anticipating ways to implement the draft guidance without knowing 
whether the draft guidance will be finalized as it is currently 
written. 

The draft guidance, if finalized as currently written, would prescribe 
new procedures for determining whether allegations of domestic abuse 
meet criteria for entry into the service Family Advocacy Program 
Central Registry (the database of clinical cases of domestic abuse, 
discussed later). For example, one major change introduced in this 
draft guidance is that the services would no longer form Case Review 
Committees; instead, they would use Incident Determination Committees. 
These new committees would be multidisciplinary teams, including 
command representatives, with similar membership and voting rules 
across the services. They would evaluate alleged reports of domestic 
abuse and determine whether these cases meet the relevant criteria for 
domestic abuse and entry into the Family Advocacy Program's Central 
Registry. This change could represent an improvement because it should 
help to better ensure that the services involve senior-level command 
authorities in the determination process and that uniform criteria for 
determining whether allegations of domestic abuse are entered into the 
Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry are applied by each 
service. It could also help to better ensure the accuracy and 
completeness of data on domestic abuse incidents that are reported to 
the services' Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry and allow DOD 
to do cross-service comparisons and trend analyses. 

In the area of clinical treatment, Volume 4 of DOD's draft guidance 
states that clinical intervention approaches should reflect the 
current state of knowledge. In addition, Volume 4, if finalized, would 
establish quality assurance procedures related to clinical 
intervention as well as evaluation and accreditation reviews for 
installation domestic abuse treatment programs. These provisions may 
help ensure that the services are consistently using clinical 
practices recognized as most effective throughout the field. 

DOD Lacks an Oversight Framework That Would Allow It to Evaluate the 
Efforts of All Organizations Involved in Preventing and Treating 
Domestic Abuse: 

While DOD has established some mechanisms for overseeing its efforts 
to prevent and treat domestic abuse, it lacks a comprehensive 
oversight framework to manage the prevention and treatment of domestic 
abuse by all the organizations involved. Our prior work has 
demonstrated the importance of using an oversight framework to enable 
successful program oversight.[Footnote 19] Such a framework would 
include clear objectives, milestones, performance measures, and 
criteria for measuring progress, as well as evaluative performance 
measures with clearly defined data elements with which to analyze 
data. It has also shown that having an effective plan for implementing 
initiatives and measuring progress can help decision makers determine 
whether initiatives are achieving their desired results. Without such 
an oversight framework, DOD does not have the information necessary to 
perform the management functions involved in evaluating and monitoring 
the efforts of all organizations in preventing and treating victims 
and abusers. In our 2006 report, we recommended that DOD develop an 
oversight framework to monitor implementation of the recommendations 
made by the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence.[Footnote 20] DOD 
concurred with this recommendation. However, as of April 2010, the 
department had not taken action. In an official response to our 
written questions, DOD stated that the responsibility for developing 
this framework "mistakenly was not reassigned" after the Family 
Violence Policy Office was closed in 2007. During our current 
engagement, we noted the lack of a broader oversight framework to 
enable DOD to measure whether it was meeting its goals for all its 
domestic abuse efforts. DOD's instruction on domestic abuse, which 
sets out many responsibilities and requirements related to DOD's 
domestic abuse prevention and response efforts, charges the Under 
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness with developing and 
maintaining the instruction and ensuring compliance. It also directs 
the Under Secretary to program, budget, and allocate funds and other 
resources to meet the policy objectives of the instruction, which 
include (1) preventing and eliminating domestic abuse in DOD and (2) 
providing for the safety of victims; holding abusers appropriately 
accountable for their behavior; and coordinating the response to 
domestic abuse with the local community. Despite these duties, this 
office has not taken certain steps needed to carry out its 
responsibilities. 

The Office of the Secretary of Defense has established some annual 
metrics from which some trends can be analyzed using data in the 
Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry. For example, as we discuss 
later in this report, this office can present information on the 
numbers of cases reported to Family Advocacy Program offices and the 
rates of domestic abuse per thousand married couples (see appendix III 
for some of these data.) DOD can also use this database to present 
demographic information on the persons in that database who are 
victims and perpetrators, their age, rank, and whether substance use 
was involved. However, as we discuss elsewhere, the Central Registry 
does not represent all cases of domestic abuse that occur throughout 
DOD. In order for DOD to manage all cases of domestic abuse that occur 
throughout the department, these metrics would have to be applied to 
both criminal and noncriminal cases. There are also other metrics, 
including performance goals, that would facilitate the evaluation of 
its domestic abuse efforts and the assessment of their effectiveness. 
For example, the office has not established: 

* goals for objectives such as reducing the frequency and severity of 
domestic abuse incidents and reducing recidivism among alleged abusers, 

* metrics with which to analyze trends in order to measure progress, 
and: 

* metrics to determine whether its awareness campaigns are effective. 

According to DOD officials and servicemembers we contacted, domestic 
abuse has a negative effect on readiness mostly due to the amount of 
time spent by commanders and others on this issue. However, we 
recognize that measuring the effect would be difficult, if not cost 
prohibitive. 

Because DOD does not have an oversight framework for its domestic 
abuse efforts, decision makers do not have the information they need 
to evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts or all the information 
needed to help prevent domestic abuse from occurring or ensuring that 
servicemembers who are victims of domestic abuse receive the care they 
need. 

DOD Cannot Determine How Many Incidents of Domestic Abuse Involving 
Servicemembers Occur or Analyze Trends: 

DOD has not clearly defined who is responsible for ensuring the 
accuracy of data on domestic abuse and matching data in its database 
on clinical cases--the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry--to 
data in its database on law enforcement cases, the Defense Incident-
Based Reporting System. As a result, DOD continues to have long-
standing problems with the reliability and completeness of data on 
incidents of domestic abuse and does not have visibility over the 
total number of these incidents that occur throughout DOD. 

In a June 2010 letter to us, the Acting Deputy Under Secretary of 
Defense for Military Community and Family Policy stated that staff 
attention was not prioritized for a database with a limited 
operational or oversight purpose, when other operational requirements 
that affect much greater numbers of military personnel have had higher 
priority. The Acting Deputy Under Secretary cited the fact that, based 
on reports to the Family Advocacy Program, which are contained in the 
Central Registry, the annual rate of servicemembers alleged to have 
committed domestic violence against their spouses is less than 1 
percent of married servicemembers. As cited earlier in this report, 
cases reported to Family Advocacy Program offices do not include all 
domestic violence cases reported to law enforcement. However, if we 
were to assume that the rate cited by DOD represents a baseline, it is 
important to remember that many individuals other than the victims are 
also affected by domestic violence, including family, other 
servicemembers, and the general military community. Incidents of 
domestic abuse, in addition to affecting the military community at 
large on a near-term basis, can also have expanded long-term 
consequences. For example, the National Coalition Against Domestic 
Violence states that witnessing violence between one's parents or 
caretakers is the strongest risk factor of transmitting violent 
behavior from one generation to the next. The coalition also states 
that boys who witness domestic violence are twice as likely to abuse 
their own partners and children when they become adults. Positive 
leadership and oversight are critical in communicating the importance 
of this issue. In prior work, we have reported that committed, 
sustained leadership and persistent attention by all parties are 
indispensable for making lasting change.[Footnote 21] 

In an official response to our questions, DOD stated that it is the 
individual service's responsibility to submit accurate and complete 
information to the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System. Through a 
number of interviews, data requests, and official statements, we 
confirmed that the services are sending some data to the Defense 
Incident-Based Reporting System. However, according to a senior 
official from the Defense Manpower Data Center (the office responsible 
for managing the database), the services are providing only a fraction 
of the required data, and reporting from the services has not improved 
significantly in the last several years. According to this official, 
the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System remains unable to provide 
accurate, complete, and usable statistical information about domestic 
violence incidents.[Footnote 22] We first reported on the lack of 
reliable and complete data in the Defense Incident-Based Reporting 
System in a 2006 report.[Footnote 23] In that report we recommended 
that DOD develop a comprehensive management plan to address 
deficiencies in the data. In our April 2010 follow-up report, we found 
that this plan had not been developed.[Footnote 24] A comprehensive 
oversight framework could include a plan to resolve data discrepancies 
and provide for the development of reliable and complete data with 
which to understand the full magnitude of the domestic abuse problem 
and analyze any trends. In a June 2010 letter to us, the Acting Deputy 
Under Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy 
stated that DOD planned to develop and implement a management plan "to 
meet the requirements for the domestic violence database in the 
statute." According to the letter, the Under Secretary of Defense for 
Personnel and Readiness acknowledges that this office "has failed to 
create a database, including the action taken by command in response 
to every reported incident of domestic violence for which there was 
sufficient evidence to take disciplinary action." The Acting Deputy 
Under Secretary further states, "It was originally believed that this 
requirement could be fulfilled through the integration of data 
contained in existing databases." DOD provided no time frame in which 
this plan will be completed, and we continue to believe that such a 
plan is necessary. 

DOD Is Currently Using Its Central Registry Database to Report Numbers 
of Domestic Abuse Cases: 

DOD currently uses its Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry to 
officially report numbers of domestic abuse cases that occur 
throughout the services (see appendix III for an example of these 
numbers). In addition to the fact that the Central Registry only 
contains information on domestic abuse incidents that were reported to 
the Family Advocacy Program, the data also may not include the 
following: 

1. Cases that involved law enforcement but were not reported to the 
Family Advocacy Program.[Footnote 25] 

2. Cases involving reserve servicemembers who were not on active duty 
when the incident occurred.[Footnote 26] 

3. Cases involving servicemembers who receive nonmilitary clinical 
services that were not reported to DOD because the servicemembers 
chose not to report them or because of civilian confidentiality rules. 

4. Cases handled by civilian law enforcement systems.[Footnote 27] 

5. Cases reported to a commander (but not to law enforcement or the 
Family Advocacy Program) in which the commander took no action, took 
administrative action, or issued nonjudicial punishment.[Footnote 28] 

6. Information on the disposition of cases (i.e., whether the alleged 
offender was convicted, served a sentence, or received a nonjudicial 
punishment).[Footnote 29] 

We recognize that some of these data would be difficult to obtain, but 
whether they are obtained or not, the fact that these data are 
consistently missing further illustrates potential limitations in 
DOD's data on domestic abuse incidents affecting servicemembers. 
Because neither database alone accounts for all cases of domestic 
violence in the military, DOD must match the data from these two 
databases to derive a complete count of all cases of domestic 
violence. It also remains important for DOD to track noncriminal 
domestic abuse cases. From 2000 until 2003, while the Defense Task 
Force on Domestic Violence was in operation, DOD attempted to manually 
match data from the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System and the 
Central Registry to compare information on specific cases. There was 
no method found for smoothly matching the information from the two 
databases to obtain a complete picture of domestic abuse incidents, 
both criminal and noncriminal. Matching was not attempted after that 
time. A senior official in the Defense Manpower Data Center, the 
office responsible for maintaining both systems, stated that because 
of the condition of the data in the law enforcement system, it would 
not be feasible to conduct a match of the two databases in 2010. DOD 
Family Advocacy Program officials agreed that it would not be possible 
to link the Central Registry data with Defense Incident-Based 
Reporting System data. At this time, DOD has not made a successful 
data match, and therefore it is still unable to report the total 
number of domestic violence incidents throughout the military. 

There Is No Requirement for Reporting of Data from the Law Enforcement 
Database to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: 

Oversight by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 
Readiness of the number of incidents of domestic abuse is limited. The 
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 required that 
the secretaries of the military departments maintain data and report 
annually to the administrator of the database, which is the Defense 
Manpower Data Center. The center maintains the corporate databases on 
domestic abuse. The law does not set up any additional requirements 
for producing or reporting data on these incidents to the Under 
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. A senior DOD 
official responsible for database policy stated that any reporting of 
statistics from the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System is 
currently done in response to ad hoc requests from DOD or Congress and 
that no regular reports on domestic violence incidents are produced. 
On the other hand, the Defense Manpower Data Center does provide an 
annual report to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 
Readiness that includes the numbers of cases reported to the Family 
Advocacy Program's Central Registry. 

DOD Lacks Data That Would Allow It to Target At-Risk Groups: 

Apart from limitations in overall incident data collected by DOD, the 
department also does not systematically collect data on all factors 
that could contribute to domestic abuse. As a result, it is limited in 
its ability to measure how well it is targeting at-risk groups. A 
comprehensive oversight framework could establish specific goals, such 
as reducing the frequency and severity of domestic abuse incidents and 
reducing recidivism among alleged abusers. It could also establish 
metrics with which to measure progress in meeting those goals. 
According to the DOD Family Advocacy Program Directive, it is DOD 
policy to prevent domestic abuse by providing standardized programs 
and activities for families identified as being most at risk of 
experiencing domestic abuse.[Footnote 30] In addition, according to 
the DOD Manual for Child Maltreatment and Domestic Abuse Incident 
Reporting System,[Footnote 31] it is DOD policy to maintain a central 
database to analyze the scope of domestic abuse, as well as 
information about domestic abuse victims and offenders to determine 
the effectiveness of Family Advocacy Program services and to develop 
changes in policy to address domestic abuse. The reporting 
requirements established by the manual are somewhat limited and 
include information about individuals, such as gender, age, rank, 
whether the individual had consumed alcohol or drugs, and the 
individual's relationship to the victim or offender. Without 
collecting and analyzing information on other factors that may 
contribute to domestic abuse, such as deployment or financial 
instability, DOD is limited in its ability to effectively target at- 
risk military groups, determine the effectiveness of Family Advocacy 
Program services, and make fact-based changes to policy. (DOD's draft 
guidance mentions these additional risk factors, as discussed later, 
but does not require the services to report this information to DOD.) 

During our site visits, servicemembers and civilian personnel 
identified several factors that they believe contributed to domestic 
abuse. We spoke with participants in 52 discussion groups about these 
factors.[Footnote 32] Of the risk factors mentioned by these groups, 
deployment was cited most often as a potential risk factor. Group 
participants' concerns regarding deployment included the perception 
that domestic abuse seems to increase following a servicemember's 
return, as well as the concern that preparing for deployment may 
contribute to domestic abuse. The second most cited potential risk 
factor for domestic abuse was financial problems, which several groups 
directly associated with deployment. For example, a couple might 
experience problems in managing their joint finances when one of them 
is deployed and not able to participate in this management. Other 
factors cited less often were a family history of domestic violence 
and infidelity or the perception of infidelity. 

Several characteristics of typical victims and perpetrators of 
domestic abuse were mentioned during our site visits. In particular, 
participants in 34 of 52 discussion groups stated that younger 
servicemembers seemed to be more likely to be involved in domestic 
abuse incidents than older servicemembers. More than half of the 
discussion groups that commented on contributing factors also had 
participants who said that they believed alcohol contributed to 
domestic abuse. DOD systematically collects some basic data from all 
services on the perpetrators and victims of domestic abuse. These 
data, which are recorded in the Family Advocacy Program's Central 
Registry, offer some insight into demographic characteristics of 
offenders and victims. For example, in fiscal year 2009, data reported 
to the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry indicate that 67 
percent of abusers were male, while 33 percent were female. Sixty-two 
percent of the abusers were active-duty servicemembers, while 38 
percent were not. (Figure 2 confirms that the number of active-duty 
military perpetrators is higher than the number of perpetrators who 
are nonmilitary, referred to in the figure as civilians. However, DOD 
officials stressed that it is very difficult for DOD to control the 
behavior of civilian perpetrators, as DOD does not have the authority 
to mandate that these perpetrators be educated, counseled, or 
prosecuted.) Among domestic abuse victims, 47 percent were active-duty 
servicemembers, while 52 percent were not. (See figs. 2 and 3 for 
illustrations of the demographic characteristics of perpetrators and 
victims of domestic abuse incidents reported to the Family Advocacy 
Program's Central Registry by military status or rank and by age.) 
Central Registry data also allow DOD to determine what percentage of 
domestic abuse cases involved alcohol or drugs. For example, according 
to these data, in fiscal year 2008, out of the 7,386 cases that were 
determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse, 29 percent reported 
the use of alcohol and/or drugs by the alleged offender; 18 percent 
reported the use of alcohol and/or drugs by the victim; and 14 percent 
reported the use of alcohol and/or drugs by both the victim and 
alleged offender. 

Figure 2: Military or Nonmilitary Status and Rank of Substantiated 
Perpetrators of Domestic Abuse Reported to DOD's Family Advocacy 
Program's Central Registry for Fiscal Year 2009: 

[Refer to PDF for image: vertical bar graph] 

Status: E1-3; 
Number of allegations: 1,415. 

Status: E4-6; 
Number of allegations: 2,798. 

Status: E7-9; 
Number of allegations: 239. 

Status: O1-3; 
Number of allegations: 63. 

Status: O4-10; 
Number of allegations: 38. 

Status: WO 1-5; 
Number of allegations: 27. 

Status: Civilian; 
Number of allegations: 2,817. 

Status: Unknown; 
Number of allegations: 79. 

Source: GAO’s presentation of data from DOD’s Family Advocacy Program 
Central Registry. 

Note: Civilians in this figure include nonmilitary spouses and 
intimate partners of active-duty servicemembers. 

Rank abbreviations are defined as follows: E1-3 = Enlisted 1-3; 
Enlisted 4-6; Enlisted 7-9; Officers 01-03; Officers 04-10; Warrant 
Officers 1-5. 

[End of figure] 

Figure 3: Age of Substantiated Domestic Abuse Victims in DOD's Family 
Advocacy Program's Central Registry for Fiscal Year 2009: 

[Refer to PDF for image: pie-chart] 

25-35 years: 46%; 
18-24 years: 41%; 
Greater than 35 years: 12%; 
Unknown: 1%. 

Source: DOD’s Family Advocacy Program Central Registry. 

[End of figure] 

DOD Has Identified Additional Potential Risk Factors in Draft Guidance 
but Does Not Require the Services to Report This Information to DOD: 

In the draft manual accompanying DOD's draft Family Advocacy Program 
Instruction, DOD recognizes that a number of additional risk factors 
can contribute to domestic abuse.[Footnote 33] Volume Four of the 
draft manual, Family Advocacy Program: Guidelines for Clinical 
Intervention for Persons Reported as Domestic Abusers, identifies the 
following risk factors for domestic abuse, among others: 

* Previous physical and sexual violence and emotional abuse committed 
in current and previous relationships. 

* Relationship problems such as infidelity or significant ongoing 
conflict. 

* Financial problems. 

* Mental health issues and/or disorders. 

* Experience of traumatic events during military service, including 
events that resulted in physical injuries. 

DOD's draft manual also addresses issues related to deployment among 
factors to be considered in treatment planning and requires clinicians 
to include information about whether the servicemember is scheduled to 
be deployed or has been deployed within the past year in their 
assessments. For example, the draft manual states that servicemembers 
scheduled to deploy in the near future may be highly stressed and 
therefore at risk for using poor conflict management skills. Likewise, 
the draft guidance states that a servicemember deployed in a combat 
operation or in an operation where significant trauma occurred may be 
at a higher risk of committing domestic abuse upon return. 

The draft manual recognizes that these and other factors potentially 
contribute to domestic abuse and requires clinicians to collect 
information about these factors during initial and follow-up 
assessments. However, the draft guidance, if formalized as currently 
written, will not require that the clinicians report this information 
so that it can be aggregated for analysis. Additionally, draft 
guidance does not contain any other new reporting requirements for 
collecting data that would allow DOD to better conduct cross-service 
analyses to understand the role that deployment and other factors may 
have on domestic abuse. Consequently, while the draft guidance should 
result in improvements in data that are collected, if implemented as 
currently written, DOD and the military services will still be limited 
in their ability to effectively target at-risk military families, 
determine the effectiveness of Family Advocacy Program services, and 
make fact-based changes to domestic abuse policy. 

Domestic Abuse May Have a Negative Effect on Readiness, but Measuring 
the Effect Would Be Difficult: 

High-ranking DOD officials have frequently stated that servicemembers' 
mental states have direct effects on mission readiness. For example, 
during a speech delivered in December 2009, the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff acknowledged that the military's ability to carry out 
its mission is directly affected by the family's health. He stated 
that "our readiness to be able to carry out our mission as United 
States military is directly impacted, fully integrated, by how our 
families are taken care of, paid attention to, and that is a 
fundamental readiness issue." Similarly, a September 2009 Air Force 
press release stated that "mission and family life are closely 
connected. When issues surface in either area, both are affected." An 
Army press release in April 2008 stated that "family readiness equals 
mission readiness." A U.S. Navy press release in December 2009 stated 
that the Navy is losing too many personnel to domestic violence, 
drugs, alcohol, and suicide. 

During our site visits we heard from participants in 27 discussion 
groups that domestic abuse negatively affects mission readiness. 
Groups' concerns included the belief that domestic abuse negatively 
affects mission readiness because of the large amount of time the 
command is required to spend dealing with the issue. Another concern 
was that servicemembers involved with domestic abuse may be unable to 
deploy, which can place additional resource strains on a unit. One 
Army officer commented that a commander may not replace a 
servicemember who has a pending domestic abuse case with a deployable 
servicemember until the case is finalized. Additional concerns from 
groups included that servicemembers involved with domestic abuse are 
often distracted by these issues, thereby affecting the 
servicemember's ability to do his or her job. This distraction can 
then affect the safety, cohesion, and morale of the unit. One Air 
Force commander said that a domestic abuse case may result in 
"mistakes that could have significant ramifications." While it is 
commonly noted that domestic abuse has a negative effect on mission 
readiness, it would be difficult, if not cost prohibitive, to quantify 
that effect. 

Effect of Lautenberg convictions on readiness: 

The 1996 amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968, referred to as the 
"Lautenberg Amendment," prohibits a servicemember with a qualifying 
conviction from carrying a firearm and results in a measurable effect 
of domestic abuse on readiness. [Footnote 34] DOD has an instruction 
that addresses the law and provides procedures for its implementation, 
as well as related DOD policies. [Footnote 35] As explained in the 
instruction, the Lautenberg Amendment prohibits anyone who has been 
convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from shipping or 
transporting in interstate or foreign commerce, or possessing in or 
affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or receiving any 
firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in 
interstate or foreign commerce. As explained in the DOD instruction, 
the Lautenberg Amendment also makes it a felony for any person to sell 
or otherwise dispose of firearms or ammunition to any person he or she 
knows or has reasonable cause to believe has been convicted of a 
"misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." 

During our site visits, one Air Force senior noncommissioned officer 
explained that the Lautenberg Amendment would bar an airman from 
carrying a weapon and thereby "reduce his or her value as an airman." 
A Navy senior noncommissioned officer said that he would be short a 
person for certain duties if the servicemember were convicted of a 
Lautenberg offense. An officer from the Marine Corps explained that 
the Lautenberg Amendment has a major effect on readiness because an 
individual who cannot carry a weapon is "of no use" to the Marine 
Corps. An official from the Army Readiness Office stated that the 
number of servicemembers with such convictions is small and that the 
consequent effect on overall readiness is minimal. 

The military--and the civilian sectors--rely mainly on self-reporting 
of Lautenberg convictions because the reporting of these convictions 
by all 50 states varies. According to the Director of the Family 
Advocacy Program, there is no standardized form for all counties and 
states to use to record information on domestic violence offenses, and 
whether this information is sent to the military depends on the state. 
As such, all servicemembers with qualifying convictions may not be 
known. This finding coincides with a finding reported recently by the 
Army in its Army: Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide 
Prevention.[Footnote 36] In that report, the Army noted "a widening 
gap between the extent of high risk behavior and leaders' situational 
awareness, which permits a high risk population of individuals to move 
undetected through the ranks." One reason cited by the Army for this 
lack of awareness is that there are "disciplinary and reporting 
shortfalls by commanders, law enforcement and program/service managers 
[that] create an unknown gap in visibility of criminal activity." 

Conclusions: 

Incidents of domestic abuse, in addition to affecting the victims, the 
families, and the general military community at large, can also have 
expanded, long-term consequences on the children of victims. At 
present, DOD lacks the sustained leadership and oversight of its 
efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse that would enable the 
department to accurately assess the effectiveness of these efforts. 
Oversight frameworks, with specific goals, milestones, and metrics for 
assessing results, can help federal agencies focus on priorities and 
measure the success of their activities. However, implementation of 
such a framework for this issue in this context will require the 
sustained leadership of DOD officials to maintain the long-term focus 
on and accountability for stated objectives. DOD took several actions 
after it established the Family Violence Policy Office to oversee 
implementation of the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence's 
recommendations. However, the dismantling of that office without 
reassigning responsibilities of the staff who were dedicated to 
overseeing the implementation of Task Force recommendations may have 
lessened DOD's efforts to document, prevent, and treat domestic abuse. 
And though overall responsibility for domestic abuse efforts remained 
with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 
Readiness, this office has taken few actions to demonstrate sustained 
commitment to improving its efforts in this area. One significant 
instruction on DOD's domestic abuse policies, for example, has been in 
draft for 4 years. Also, problems with DOD's law enforcement and 
clinical databases have not been resolved in a decade. In 1999, 
Congress directed the Secretary of Defense to establish and maintain a 
central database containing information on domestic violence incidents 
involving servicemembers. In our 2006 report, we recommended that the 
Secretary of Defense direct the Under Secretary of Defense for 
Personnel and Readiness to develop, in conjunction with the service 
secretaries, a comprehensive management plan to address deficiencies 
that focuses on ensuring that accurate and complete data exist and 
that all instances in the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System and 
Central Registry are matched and reported annually, as required in the 
Department of Defense's Manual 7730.47-M. Because that recommendation 
remains open and valid, we reiterate the need for the Secretary of 
Defense to take action to implement the recommendation. Having 
reliable data on the numbers of domestic abuse incidents that occur 
throughout DOD, as well as information about factors that may 
contribute to domestic abuse, would allow DOD to determine the extent 
of the problem and its effect on readiness, identify trends, and 
assess the department's response. At present, DOD's leadership lacks 
the visibility over information needed to understand the magnitude of 
the domestic abuse problem, identify trends in domestic abuse, and use 
fact-based information to improve the effectiveness of its efforts. 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

In addition to reiterating our prior recommendation regarding the need 
for a management plan to address deficiencies in DOD's database of 
domestic violence, we recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct 
the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to take the 
following two actions: 

* Finalize and issue DOD's Instruction 6400.01 on the Family Advocacy 
Program, which has been in draft since 2006, and the accompanying 
multi-volume manual that is also currently in draft form. 

* Develop an oversight framework to guide the efforts of all DOD 
organizations involved in preventing and treating victims and 
perpetrators of domestic abuse and evaluate their effectiveness. At a 
minimum, such a framework should include long-term goals, objectives, 
and milestones; strategies to be used to accomplish goals; and 
criteria and metrics for measuring progress. As part of that oversight 
framework, 

(a) collect and analyze data on factors that DOD has identified as 
contributing to domestic abuse to help ensure that the department's 
efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse result in reduced 
frequency and severity of domestic abuse incidents and reduced 
recidivism among alleged abusers and: 

(b) develop and use metrics to measure the effectiveness of campaigns 
to raise awareness of domestic abuse services available. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

In written comments on a draft of this report, DOD concurred with one 
recommendation and partially concurred with the other. In addition, 
DOD agreed that two recommendations we had made in our 2006 report 
still had merit.[Footnote 37] DOD's comments are reprinted in appendix 
IV. DOD also provided technical comments, which we incorporated where 
appropriate. 

In concurring with our first recommendation,[Footnote 38] that the 
department needs to finalize and issue DOD's Instruction 6400.01 on 
the Family Advocacy Program, which has been in draft since 2006, DOD 
stated that the instruction and accompanying manual had already been 
resubmitted into the policy coordination process. DOD attributed the 
delay in issuing the guidance to the fact that DOD had been addressing 
and resolving the services' concern that the new guidance increases 
senior-level command involvement during a period of high operational 
tempo. DOD officials stated that this concern has now been addressed. 
However, DOD did not provide a new estimate of when the guidance would 
be finalized. 

In partially concurring with our second recommendation that DOD 
develop an oversight framework to guide the efforts of all 
organizations involved in preventing and treating victims and 
perpetrators of domestic abuse and evaluate their effectiveness, 
[Footnote 39] DOD agreed that an oversight framework for DOD 
organizations addressing domestic violence is appropriate. However, 
DOD also stated that domestic violence is not unique to DOD but is a 
national problem and that the department is ready to work with other 
agencies that have federal responsibilities in this area to select 
uniform goals, objectives, and metrics on domestic violence from among 
any that they have developed, to adapt any that are not directly 
applicable to the active component of the military, and to work 
collaboratively to create them if they do not exist. While we agree 
that such coordination with other federal agencies would enrich the 
efforts that DOD has ongoing in the area of domestic abuse, we 
continue to believe that DOD needs to first develop an oversight 
framework for all DOD organizations to set long-term goals, 
objectives, milestones, and metrics to gauge the progress of the 
programs it has under its control in preventing and treating domestic 
abuse. Further, DOD stated that the services have already begun to 
collect and analyze data on factors that contribute to domestic abuse. 
However, it stated that it is the responsibility of the services to 
increase public awareness of domestic violence and the services are in 
the best position to develop and use metrics to measure the 
effectiveness of their efforts. We continue to believe that the Office 
of the Secretary of Defense has an oversight role in developing 
metrics to measure the effectiveness of the services' public awareness 
campaigns. 

In responding to a recommendation we made in a prior report that DOD 
develop a comprehensive management plan to address deficiencies in the 
Defense Incident-Based Reporting System and that data from this system 
and the Family Advocacy Program Central Registry be matched and 
reported annually, DOD again concurred and stated that it is 
developing such a management plan. It also acknowledged that it has 
failed to create a fully operable database, including the action taken 
by commands in response to every reported incident of domestic 
violence for which there was sufficient evidence to take disciplinary 
action. DOD noted that it has taken steps to prepare to match its two 
data systems, such as reverifying the data fields in the law 
enforcement database to ensure that domestic violence reports can be 
matched to Family Advocacy Program data on physical or sexual abuse of 
a spouse or intimate partner. However, DOD did not state when it 
planned to actually match the two databases to assure itself that the 
databases are complementary and combine to provide an accurate count 
of the total number of domestic abuse cases. 

In responding to another recommendation we made in a prior report, 
that DOD take appropriate steps to ensure that all commander actions 
related to domestic violence incidents are entered into law 
enforcement systems, DOD concurred. It stated that the department has 
made substantial efforts to ensure that commanders are aware of their 
responsibilities for reporting disciplinary actions related to 
domestic violence to the law enforcement database and will continue to 
explore strategies with the services to increase compliance with this 
requirement. 

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents 
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days 
from the report date. At that time, we will send copies to the 
Secretary of Defense and to the appropriate congressional committees. 
This report will be available at no charge on GAO's Web site at 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov]. 

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please 
contact me at (202) 512-3604 or by e-mail at farrellb@gao.gov. Contact 
points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs 
may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major 
contributions to the report are listed in appendix V. 

Sincerely yours, 

Signed by: 

Brenda S. Farrell: 
Director, Defense Capabilities and Management: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology: 

To evaluate the extent to which the Department of Defense (DOD) is 
able to determine the effectiveness of its efforts to prevent and 
treat domestic abuse, we reviewed relevant laws as well as current and 
draft DOD guidance related to the department's domestic abuse 
activities, including DOD Instruction 6400.06, Domestic Abuse 
Involving DoD Military and Certain Affiliated Personnel, and DOD 
Directive 6400.1, Family Advocacy Program. We also interviewed DOD 
officials responsible for domestic abuse efforts, including the Acting 
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family 
Policy and the Director of the Family Advocacy Program. We expanded on 
work we had underway to satisfy a statutory mandate to report on 
progress DOD had made to implement recommendations we had made in a 
2006 report.[Footnote 40] In addition, we submitted formal questions 
about DOD's efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse to the Office 
of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USD 
(P&R)), and that office provided us with written answers representing 
DOD's official position. We obtained and reviewed documents from the 
USD (P&R) which (1) summarized the actions the office has taken since 
2006 on recommendations made by the Defense Task Force on Domestic 
Violence and (2) outlined initiatives the office intends to take to 
further respond to our 2006 recommendations. In addition, we reviewed 
service policies and guidance related to domestic abuse. 

To assess the reliability of the Defense Incident-Based Reporting 
System and the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry, we reviewed 
documents and interviewed knowledgeable officials about the systems' 
quality controls for ensuring the data are complete and accurate. In 
addition, we obtained samples of data provided from each system. We 
determined that the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry data 
were sufficiently reliable for our purposes--which were to (1) 
identify the incidence of domestic abuse cases reported to Family 
Advocacy Program offices and (2) describe the demographic factors that 
may contribute to domestic abuse in cases reported to the Family 
Advocacy Program offices. We determined that the Defense Incident-
Based Reporting System data were not sufficiently reliable for these 
purposes. 

In conducting our review of DOD's domestic abuse activities, we 
interviewed officials at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense 
for Personnel and Readiness' Military Community and Family Policy 
Office, Family Advocacy Program Office, Office of Law Enforcement 
Policy and Support, and the Defense Manpower Data Center; the Air 
Force, Army, and Marine Corps Family Advocacy Program Offices; the 
Navy's Fleet and Family Support Center; and the Marine Corps' Manpower 
and Reserve Affairs Office. We visited five installations in the 
United States, including Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Maryland; 
Fort Carson, Colorado; Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia; Eglin Air 
Force Base, Florida; and Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, North 
Carolina. We selected these locations based on the installations' 
population size, the rate of reported incidents of domestic abuse, and 
the intensity of servicemembers' deployment schedules. We also 
considered recommendations made by DOD personnel and whether the 
installations had participated in pilot programs related to domestic 
abuse. 

To facilitate the information-gathering process during our site 
visits, we created multiple discussion group question sets for 
different types of personnel. These included officers (including 
commanders); senior noncommissioned officers; junior enlisted 
servicemembers; Family Advocacy Program officials (including managers, 
case workers, and staff); victim advocates; law enforcement personnel; 
legal officials; health care officials; spouses of military 
servicemembers; and chaplains. Additionally, when possible, we 
arranged to speak with officer and enlisted groups of the same gender, 
in an effort to facilitate a more open discussion about domestic abuse 
issues. When possible, we also interviewed civilian social service and 
law enforcement officials. While some of the questions were the same 
or very similar, the content of the interview questions for discussion 
groups was tailored to the type of personnel interviewed. For example, 
when we were speaking with counselors, chaplains, and commanders who 
were responding to domestic abuse, our questions were tailored to 
their perceptions of the services that they provided and their 
perceptions of contributing factors to domestic abuse. When we were 
speaking with enlisted males and females, on the other hand, our 
questions were targeted at obtaining their views of what services were 
available and what these services were. Also, we did not always ask 
all questions in our question sets because of time limitations. We 
conducted a total of 69 discussion groups across all five 
installations between October 2, 2009, and December 4, 2009 (see table 
1). The groups' size ranged from 2 to 17 participants. 

Table 1: Discussion Group Types by Service: 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Enlisted personnel; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Officers; 
Number of groups: 4. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Senior noncommissioned officers; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Spouses; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Family Advocacy Program officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Victim advocates; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Health care officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Legal officials; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Law enforcement officials; 
Number of groups: 3. 

Service: Air Force: 
Group type: Chaplains; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Enlisted personnel; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Officers; 
Number of groups: 5. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Senior noncommissioned officers; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Spouses; 
Number of groups: 0. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Family Advocacy Program officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Victim advocates; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Health care officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Legal officials; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Law enforcement officials; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Army: 
Group type: Chaplains; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Enlisted personnel; 
Number of groups: 3. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Officers; 
Number of groups: 3. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Senior noncommissioned officers; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Spouses; 
Number of groups: 0. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Family Advocacy Program officials; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Victim advocates; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Health care officials; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Legal officials; 
Number of groups: 4. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Law enforcement officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Navy: 
Group type: Chaplains; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Enlisted personnel; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Officers; 
Number of groups: 3. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Senior noncommissioned officers; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Spouses; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Family Advocacy Program officials; 
Number of groups: 2. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Victim advocates; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Health care officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Legal officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Law enforcement officials; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Service: Marine Corps: 
Group type: Chaplains; 
Number of groups: 1. 

Source: GAO. 

[End of table] 

Following the completion of our site visits, we analyzed the 
information we received during the discussion groups to identify 
common themes. To better understand these themes, we identified two 
distinct types of groups--those who were comprised of potential users 
of domestic abuse services and those who were comprised of domestic 
abuse service providers or responders. The potential user groups 
included officers, senior noncommissioned officers, junior enlisted 
servicemembers, and spouses of military servicemembers, while the 
service provider or responder groups included Family Advocacy Program 
officials, victim advocates, health care officials, legal officials, 
law enforcement officials, and chaplains. Of the 69 discussion groups, 
31 of the groups were potential users of domestic abuse services, 
while the other 38 were service providers or responders. Although the 
resulting information cannot be generalized to the particular 
installation or service population, we believe that the views 
expressed during the discussion groups provided us with valuable 
insights into DOD's efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: DOD Actions Taken in Response to GAO's 2006 
Recommendations: 

The Department of Defense (DOD) addressed one of the recommendations 
in our 2006 report to improve its efforts to prevent and treat 
domestic violence and has taken steps toward implementing two more, 
but it has not taken any actions on four of the recommendations (see 
table 2 for a list of the recommendations and DOD's concurrence or 
noncurrence with them).[Footnote 41] Specifically, DOD met the intent 
of our recommendation to clarify chaplain guidance concerning 
privileged communication. Regarding our recommendation on ensuring 
that commander actions related to domestic violence incidents are 
entered into all law enforcement systems, DOD has taken some actions 
to inform commanders of their responsibility, but the data on 
commanders' actions remain incomplete. For example, an Air Force 
official told us that, although these data are recorded in one of its 
law enforcement databases, commander actions are not reported to the 
Defense Incident-Based Reporting System. Without complete information, 
DOD lacks visibility into the military's response to domestic 
violence. DOD has also taken actions that have partially met the 
intent of our recommendation regarding a communication strategy for 
disseminating DOD guidance. Although DOD nonconcurred with the portion 
of this recommendation addressing the need for DOD to articulate its 
policy on distributing military protective orders, it did clarify its 
policy by issuing guidance in 2007. If DOD issues its draft Family 
Advocacy Program guidance in July 2010, we believe the department will 
have met the intent of this recommendation. 

For the remaining four recommendations, however, DOD has not met our 
intent. First, DOD has not developed a comprehensive management plan 
to address deficiencies in the data captured in the Defense Incident-
Based Reporting System, although it partially concurred with our 
recommendation. The data remain incomplete, and as a result, DOD 
cannot provide an accurate number of domestic violence incidents that 
are reported throughout DOD. Second, although DOD concurred with our 
recommendation to develop a plan to ensure that adequate personnel are 
available to implement recommendations made by the Defense Task Force 
on Domestic Violence, at present, DOD has not done so. Third, because 
DOD nonconcurred with our recommendation, it has not taken steps to 
ensure that domestic violence training data are collected for 
chaplains. According to a senior official from the Office of the 
Secretary of Defense, chaplains are properly trained on domestic 
violence issues during officer basic training. However, we believe 
that without accurate training data, DOD lacks visibility on whether 
chaplains are prepared to handle domestic violence issues. Fourth, 
while DOD concurred with our recommendation to develop an oversight 
framework for responding to the Task Force recommendations, it has not 
done so. After the office responsible for implementing the Task Force 
recommendations was closed in 2007, DOD stated that the responsibility 
for developing this framework was "mistakenly not reassigned." 

Table 2: GAO's Recommendations in 2006 Report on Domestic Violence and 
DOD Response: 

GAO recommendation: Develop, in conjunction with the service 
secretaries, a comprehensive management plan to address deficiencies 
in the data captured in DOD's domestic violence database that focuses 
on ensuring that accurate and complete data exist and that all 
instances in the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System and Family 
Advocacy Program Central Registry are matched and reported annually, 
as required in DOD's Manual 7730.47-M; 
DOD Response: Partially concur. 

GAO recommendation: Take appropriate steps, in conjunction with the 
service secretaries, to ensure all commander actions related to 
domestic violence incidents are entered in law enforcement systems; 
DOD Response: Concur. 

GAO recommendation: Develop a plan to ensure adequate personnel are 
available to implement pending recommendations made by the Defense 
Task Force on Domestic Violence; 
DOD Response: Concur. 

GAO recommendation: Establish a communication strategy for effectively 
informing DOD and service officials about new guidance implementing 
the Task Force recommendations, to include; 
a. issuing a revised DOD Family Advocacy Program directive that is 
consistent with interim guidance for implementing the Task Force 
recommendations and; 
b. clearly articulating its policy regarding the distribution of 
military protective orders using a method that will ensure consistent 
application by all services and DOD; 
DOD Response: Partially concur. 

GAO recommendation: Develop, in conjunction with the service 
secretaries, procedures and metrics to ensure that accurate, 
consistent, and timely domestic violence training data are collected 
for chaplains; 
DOD Response: Non-concur. 

GAO recommendation: Develop, in conjunction with the service 
secretaries, chaplain guidance and training materials that highlight 
and clarify chaplain responsibilities concerning privileged 
communication; 
DOD Response: Partially non-concur. 

GAO recommendation: Develop and implement, in conjunction with the 
services, a DOD-wide oversight framework that includes a results- 
oriented evaluation plan for the implemented recommendations and a 
process for ongoing monitoring of and reporting on implementation; 
DOD Response: Concur. 

Source: GAO-06-540. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Appendix III: Incidents of Domestic Abuse as Reported in the Family 
Advocacy Program Central Registry: 

Data in DOD's Family Advocacy Program Central Registry show that the 
numbers of reported incidents of domestic abuse have decreased over 
the last decade (see table 3). As discussed earlier, these data 
included only cases reported to the Family Advocacy Program offices. 
They do not include cases that involve law enforcement or clinical 
services provided by civilian organizations that were not reported to 
the Family Advocacy Program. As a result, they represent only a 
portion of all domestic abuse cases that occur throughout DOD. 
Officials in DOD's Family Advocacy Program office told us that this 
decrease reflects a similar decrease over this period in the civilian 
population. They attributed the overall decline in domestic abuse in 
the general population to what they believe has been a high level of 
public attention paid to domestic violence in the last decade. They 
cited, specifically, the Violence Against Women Act of 1994,[Footnote 
42] which provided grants for law enforcement training. Also, they 
believe that there is now more infrastructure for education on 
domestic violence and for changing behavior. Family Advocacy Program 
officials believe that the decline in military cases of domestic abuse 
may be in part the result of intimate partners' being separated more 
frequently from each other because of deployments and in part the 
result of other factors, such as public awareness and other prevention 
methods. 

Despite the overall decrease in numbers of incidents since 2000, the 
numbers of these incidents increased from fiscal years 2008 to 2009. 
This recent increase corroborates information we received from 
military servicemembers and service providers during our site visits. 
Many groups we interviewed noted an increase in domestic abuse, which 
they attributed to the increased stress of repeated deployments to 
Iraq and Afghanistan, to financial stresses, and to other factors. 
Regarding trends shown in table 3 and figure 4, it is important to 
note that the numbers are not comparable over the entire decade. 
Beginning in fiscal year 2006, DOD began to include cases in its 
Central Registry involving "intimate partners" as well as spouses in 
its reporting of "substantiated incidents." If the change in 
definition is taken into account, the reduced incidence of domestic 
abuse over the decade would make the decrease even more pronounced 
(because excluding intimate partners in the numbers shown in the table 
for fiscal years 2006 through 2009 would lower the totals even more). 
However, as mentioned earlier, these numbers do not include 
significant populations, such as reservists and servicemembers who 
seek help from civilian organizations. 

Table 3: DOD's Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry Record of 
Incidents of Domestic Abuse: 

Fiscal year: 2000; 
Number of reported incidents: 19,479; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 12,078; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 62. 

Fiscal year: 2001; 
Number of reported incidents: 18,398; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 10,967; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 60. 

Fiscal year: 2002; 
Number of reported incidents: 17,909; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 10,546; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 59. 

Fiscal year: 2003; 
Number of reported incidents: 17,072; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 9,845; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 58. 

Fiscal year: 2004; 
Number of reported incidents: 16,392; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 9,434; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 58. 

Fiscal year: 2005; 
Number of reported incidents: 15,894; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 8,306; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 52. 

Fiscal year: 2006; 
Number of reported incidents: 15,399; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 7,926[B]; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 51. 

Fiscal year: 2007; 
Number of reported incidents: 15,260; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 7,859[C]; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 52. 

Fiscal year: 2008; 
Number of reported incidents: 15,939; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 7,386[D]; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 46. 

Fiscal year: 2009; 
Number of reported incidents: 18,208; 
Number of "substantiated" incidents[A]: 8,223[E]; 
Percentage of reported incidents that were "substantiated": 45. 

Source: GAO's presentation of data from DOD's Family Advocacy Program 
Central Registry. 

[A] Cases that are "substantiated" are determined by a board to have 
likely occurred and to have likely involved domestic abuse. This term 
is not meant in a legal sense and will no longer be used by DOD once 
it issues the draft DOD Instruction 6400.01, Family Advocacy Program, 
and its accompanying manual. 

[B] In fiscal year 2006, 340 substantiated cases involving intimate 
partners are included in the total. 

[C] In fiscal year 2007, 602 substantiated cases involving intimate 
partners are included in the total. 

[D] In fiscal year 2008, 619 substantiated cases involving intimate 
partners are included in the total. 

[E] In fiscal year 2009, 747 substantiated cases involving intimate 
partners are included in the total. 

[End of table] 

The rates of domestic abuse incidents reported to Family Advocacy 
Program offices per thousand servicemembers have also declined since 
2000 but rose from 2008 to 2009 (see figure 4). 

Figure 4: DOD's Family Advocacy Program Central Registry Record of the 
Rates of Domestic Abuse Incidents per Thousand Married Couples: 

[Refer to PDF for image: vertical bar graph] 

Rate of reported incidents, per thousand servicemembers: 

Fiscal year: 2000; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 28.4; 
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 17.6. 

Fiscal year: 2001; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 27.7; 
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 16.5. 

Fiscal year: 2002; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 26.2;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 15.4. 

Fiscal year: 2003; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 24.6;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 14.2. 

Fiscal year: 2004; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 23.5; 
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 13.5. 

Fiscal year: 2005; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 22.6;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 11.8. 

Fiscal year: 2006; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 21.7;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 11.2. 

Fiscal year: 2007; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 21.5;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 11.1. 

Fiscal year: 2008; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 22.2;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 10.3. 

Fiscal year: 2009; 
Incidents reported to the Family Advocacy Program: 24.7;	
Incidents determined to meet criteria for domestic abuse: 11.1. 

Source: GAO’s presentation of data from DOD’s Family Advocacy Program 
Central Registry. 

[End of figure] 

[End of section] 

Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Defense: 

Under Secretary Of Defense: 
Personnel And Readiness: 
4000 Defense Pentagon: 
Washington, D.C. 20301-4000: 

September 17, 2010: 

Ms. Brenda S. Farrell: 
Director, Defense Capabilities and Management: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street, N.W. 
Washington, DC 20548: 

Dear Ms. Farrell: 

This letter provides Department of Defense comments regarding the 
Government Accountability Office draft report GA0-10-923, "Military 
Personnel: Sustained Leadership and Oversight Needed to Improve DoD's 
Prevention and Treatment of Domestic Violence," dated September 2010. 

The enclosure specifically addresses the GAO's assessment of DoD's 
efforts stated in the report and each of the GAO's recommendations. 
The audit provided valuable independent oversight and assessments of 
the Department's response to domestic violence. The Department agrees 
that there is room for improvement and is committed anew to developing 
a management plan that serves the Force efficiently and satisfies the 
GAO's intent with regard to its recommendations. 

For questions concerning this report, please contact David Lloyd, 
Military Community and Family Policy, at (703) 602-5090 or 
david.11oyd@osd.mil. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Clifford L. Stanley: 

Enclosure: As stated: 

[End of letter] 

GAO Report — "Military Personnel: Sustained Leadership and Oversight 
Needed to Improve DoD's Prevention and Treatment of Domestic Abuse," 
dated September, 2010, (GAO code 351361/GAO-10-923): 

Recommendations from prior GAO Reports concerning the DoD database of 
domestic violence: 

Prior Recommendation 1: That the Secretary of Defense direct the Under 
Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) (USD(P&R)) to develop, 
in conjunction with the Service Secretaries, a comprehensive 
management plan to address deficiencies that focuses on ensuring that 
accurate and complete data exist and that all instances in the Defense 
Incident-Based Reporting System (DIBRS) and Family Advocacy Program 
Central Registry are matched and reported annually, as required in 
DoD's Manual 7730.47-M. 

DoD Comment: Concur with the GAO recommendation. USD(P&R) is 
developing and implementing a management plan to meet the requirements 
for the domestic violence database in the statute. USD(P&R) 
acknowledges it has not created a fully compliant database, including 
the action taken by command in response to every reported incident of 
domestic violence for which there was sufficient evidence to take 
disciplinary action. 

While the major problem DoD has encountered is the failure to enter 
all the appropriate law enforcement data and commanders' actions into 
a database, DoD has taken steps to address the disparity of data in 
the law enforcement and Family Advocacy Program (FAP) databases. This 
disparity is due in part to the different purposes and definitions for 
these databases and in part due to the military's process for 
responding to reports of domestic abuse and for data entry into the 
law enforcement and FAP databases. By either formal protocol or 
informal practice, incidents of domestic violence handled by civilian 
law enforcement systems are reported to military commanders or 
military law enforcement agencies. If reported to the latter, FAP is 
notified in compliance with the four Services' specific policies. 
Similarly, DoD Directive 6400.1, Family Advocacy Program, and 
Services' FAP policies require installation FAP staff to notify law 
enforcement authorities when a report of domestic abuse is received 
(unless it is a restricted report), whether or not the service member 
receives FAP clinical services. Recently, USD(P&R) offices have re-
verified the data fields in the law enforcement database to ensure 
that domestic violence reports can be matched to FAP data on physical 
or sexual abuse of a spouse or intimate partner. As a result, FAP data 
with respect to domestic violence offenses should match military law 
enforcement data with respect to those offenses, but FAP data about 
domestic abuse incidents of emotional abuse or neglect that are not 
domestic violence offenses are excluded from the data matched to data 
in the law enforcement database. 

Data regarding an incident involving a Service member that is reported 
to a commander but not to law enforcement or FAP would not be in 
either the law enforcement or the FAP databases. regardless of the 
commander's action (no action, administrative action, or nonjudicial 
punishment). USD(P&R) is addressing this problem. 

Recommendation 2: That the Secretary of Defense direct the USD(P&R) to 
take appropriate steps, in conjunction with the Service Secretaries, 
to ensure all commander actions related to domestic violence incidents 
are entered in law enforcement systems. 

DoD Comment: Concur with the GAO recommendation. The Department has 
made substantial efforts to ensure commanders are aware of their 
responsibilities for reporting disciplinary actions related to 
domestic violence to the law enforcement database. USD(P&R) will 
continue to explore strategies with the Services to increase 
compliance with this requirement. 

Concern has been expressed that there may be misinterpretation of 
commanders' responses to reported incidents for which there was 
evidence sufficient for supporting disciplinary action. This concern 
arises because, under Rule 306(b) of the Manual for Courts-Martial 
Rules for Courts-Martial, commanders are expected to dispose of 
allegations in a timely manner at the lowest appropriate level of 
disposition, including taking no action or taking administrative 
action in lieu of taking disciplinary action. As the discussion 
section under Rule 306(b) notes: 

Many factors must be taken into consideration and balanced, including, 
to the extent practicable, the nature of the offenses, any mitigating 
or extenuating circumstances, the character and military service of 
the accused, any recommendations made by subordinate commanders, the 
interest of justice, military exigencies, and the effect of the 
decision on the accused and the command. The goal should be a 
disposition that is warranted, appropriate, and fair. 

In deciding how an offense should be disposed of, factors the 
commander should consider, to the extent they are known, include: 

(A) the character and military service of the accused; 

(B) the nature of and circumstances surrounding the offense and the 
extent of the harm caused by the offense, including the offense's 
effect on morale, health, safety, welfare, and discipline; 

(C) appropriateness of the authorized punishment to the particular 
accused or offense; 

(D) possible improper motives of the accuser; 

(E) reluctance of the victim or others to testify; 

(F) cooperation of the accused in the apprehension or conviction of 
others; 

(G) availability and likelihood of prosecution of the same or similar 
and related charges against the accused by another jurisdiction; 

(H) availability and admissibility of evidence; 

(I) existence of jurisdiction over the accused and the offense; and; 

(J) likely issues. 

The statutory requirement for including "a description of the 
substantiated allegation" for each incident of reported domestic 
violence that is submitted into the database would not include a 
record of how a commander would have considered these factors and 
evaluated them in making the disposition. 

New Recommendations: 

Recommendation 3: That the Secretary of Defense direct the USD(P&R) to 
finalize and issue DoD's Instruction 6400.01 on the Family Advocacy 
Program, which has been in draft since 2006, and the accompanying 
multi-volume Manual that is also currently in draft form. 

DoD Comment: Concur with the GAO recommendation. The FAP Instruction and
accompanying Manual have been resubmitted into the policy coordination 
process. As the GAO noted, the draft guidance increases the level of 
senior-level command involvement. The delay was attributable in part 
due to concerns about whether such increased involvement could be 
implemented during this period of high operational tempo. USD(P&R) 
believes that these concerns have been addressed. 

Recommendation 4: That the Secretary of Defense direct the USD(P&R) to 
develop an oversight framework to guide the efforts of all 
organizations involved in preventing and treating victims and 
perpetrators of domestic abuse and evaluate their effectiveness. At a 
minimum, such a framework should include long-term goals, objectives, 
and milestones; strategies to be used to accomplish goals; and 
criteria and metrics for measuring progress. As part of that oversight 
framework: 

(a) Collect and analyze data on factors that DoD has identified as 
contributing to domestic abuse to help ensure that the Department's 
efforts to prevent and treat domestic abuse result in reduced 
frequency and severity of domestic abuse incidents and reduced 
recidivism among alleged abusers. 

(b) Develop and use metrics to measure the effectiveness of campaigns 
to raise awareness of domestic abuse services available. 

DoD Comment: Concur in part with the GAO recommendation. USD(P&R) 
agrees that an oversight framework for DoD organizations addressing 
domestic violence is appropriate and is working to re-establish it. 

However, both the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence and the GAO 
have recognized that domestic violence is not unique to DoD but is a 
national problem. Since this recommendation has national implications, 
DoD believes that rather than independently developing such long-term 
goals, objectives and milestones, criteria, and metrics they should be 
the product of Cooperation with the Department of Justice (DoJ) and 
the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), both of which have 
primary federal responsibility to administer the Violence Against 
Women Act, and with the Veterans Affairs (VA), to ensure as much 
national comparability as appropriate. DoJ and HEIS administer grant 
programs to state and local public agencies and to nonprofit agencies 
for prevention, intervention, and treatment of domestic violence, and 
grants to conduct related research. They also issue contracts for 
evaluation of these grant programs. The VA provides treatment to both 
veterans and to members of the Reserve Component whose experiences 
during military deployment may have created or exacerbated risk 
factors for domestic violence. DoD is ready to work with these federal 
agencies to select uniform goals, objectives and metrics on domestic 
violence from among any that they have developed, to adapt any that 
are not directly applicable to the Active Component of the military, 
and to work collaboratively to create them if they do not exist. 

In order to set goals, objectives, and milestones to reduce the 
frequency of domestic violence it is first necessary to ascertain the 
prevalence of this problem to establish a baseline. DoD has already 
taken steps to accomplish this. USD(P&R) has contributed funding to 
the Centers for Disease Control and Injury Prevention for the National 
Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Surveillance System (NISVSS), 
which included military samples. As a result, by the end of 2011 both 
the civilian sector and DoD will have reliable estimates of the annual 
extent of domestic violence, whether reported or unreported, in both 
the civilian and active component military sectors for use as 
baselines. 

In the meantime, OSD FAP has independently implemented several annual 
metrics on domestic abuse and analyzes their trends for DoD: (1) the 
number of restricted reports to their domestic abuse victim advocates 
and FAP staff, for the percentage of these that become unrestricted, 
and for the number of unrestricted reports to such victim advocates 
and FAP staff; (2) the rates of reports and substantiated reports per 
1,000 married couples in the Active Component over time from the data 
in the Services' FAP Central Registries (which takes into the account 
the increase or decrease in the Active Component force, rather than 
merely increase or decreases in the number of reports and 
substantiated reports); (3) recidivism data on alleged abusers in 
substantiated reports (with plans to set a goal for reducing 
recidivism after the forthcoming policy on clinical treatment of 
abusers takes effect); and (4) effectiveness of domestic abuser 
treatment for those who successfully complete FAP treatment. A joint-
Service FAP research project to standardize the ratings for incidents' 
severity is well underway. Such standardization is a necessary step 
for establishing severity baselines and then setting a goal for 
reduction in severity. 

The Services have already begun the collection and analysis of data on 
factors that contribute to domestic abuse. However, the application of 
this in particular strategies must take Service differences, 
complexity and cost into account — a "one size fits all" approach may 
not be appropriate. Similarly, the Services have the responsibility 
for increasing public awareness of domestic violence and resources to 
address it and have developed Service-wide and local approaches to 
implement this effort. As such, the Services may be in the best 
position to develop and use metrics to measure the effectiveness of 
their efforts. If other federal agencies establish cost-effective 
measures for evaluating the effectiveness of the national or local 
public awareness campaigns that they sponsor by grant or contract, DoD 
will consider the feasibility of applying or adapting these measures. 

[End of section] 

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contact: 

Brenda S. Farrell, (202) 512-3604 or farrellb@gao.gov: 

Acknowledgments: 

In addition to the contact above, Marilyn Wasleski, Assistant 
Director; Cynthia Grant; Nicole Harms; Elizabeth Kowalewski; Joanne 
Landesman; Alberto Leff; Eli Lewine; Ann Rivlin; Cynthia Saunders; 
Beverly Schladt; Dale Wineholt; and Elizabeth Wood made key 
contributions to this report. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] Secretary of Defense Memorandum, Domestic Violence (Feb. 28, 2001). 

[2] According to DOD Manual 7730.47-M, Manual for Defense Incident- 
Based Reporting System (Jul. 25, 2003), the Defense Incident-Based 
Reporting System is the database intended to satisfy the legislative 
requirement. 

[3] Pub. L. No. 106-65, §§ 591, 594 (1999). 

[4] Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence, 2001; Second Annual 
Report, 2002; Third Year Report, 2003 (Arlington, VA: Feb. 28, 2001; 
Feb. 25, 2002; and 2003). 

[5] GAO, Military Personnel: Progress Made in Implementing 
Recommendations to Reduce Domestic Violence, but Further Management 
Action Needed, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540] 
(Washington, D.C.: May 24, 2006). 

[6] In responding to a draft of this report, DOD noted that it had 
contributed funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Injury 
Prevention for the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence 
Surveillance System. As a result of a survey to be performed under 
that effort, DOD stated that it believes that in 2011, it will have a 
reliable estimate of the annual extent of domestic violence committed 
against women on active duty by their spouses or intimate partners and 
against civilian wives by their active-duty husbands. During our 
review, we received no details on the methodology of this survey, so 
we cannot comment on it. 

[7] Pub. L. No. 111-84, § 568 (2009). 

[8] GAO, Military Personnel: Status of Implementation of GAO's 2006 
Recommendations on DOD's Domestic Violence Program, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-577R] (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 26, 
2010). 

[9] Department of Defense Instruction 6400.06, Domestic Abuse 
Involving DoD Military and Certain Affiliated Personnel (Aug. 21, 
2007). DOD adopted these definitions in 2004. Prior to 2004, a 
distinction was not made between domestic abuse and domestic violence. 

[10] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540] and 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-577R]. 

[11] Department of Defense Instruction 6400.06, Domestic Abuse 
Involving DoD Military and Certain Affiliated Personnel (Aug. 21, 
2007); Department of Defense Directive 6400.1, Family Advocacy Program 
(FAP) (Aug. 23, 2004); Department of Defense Manual 6400.1-M-1, Manual 
for Child Maltreatment and Domestic Abuse Incident Reporting System 
(July 15, 2005); and Department of Defense Manual 6400.1-M, Family 
Advocacy Program Standards and Self-Assessment Tool (Aug. 20, 1992). 

[12] Department of Defense Manual, 7730.47-M, Manual for Defense 
Incident-Based Reporting System (Jul. 25, 2003). 

[13] National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, Pub. L. 
No. 106-65, § 594 (1999), codified at 10 U.S.C. § 1562. 

[14] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540]. 

[15] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-577R] and 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540]. 

[16] GAO, Results Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist 
Mergers and Organizational Transformations, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-669] (Washington, D.C.: Jul. 2, 
2003). 

[17] Because DOD gave us this matrix after our fieldwork had been 
completed, we did not have time to evaluate DOD's actions in detail. 

[18] DOD Instruction 6400.01, Family Advocacy Program; (draft provided 
to GAO in Jan. 2010); DOD Manual 6400.01-M-V1, Family Advocacy Program 
Standards (draft provided to GAO in Jan. 2010); DOD Manual 6400.01-M- 
V2, Family Advocacy Program: Volume 2, Child Abuse and Domestic Abuse 
Incident Reporting System (draft provided to GAO in Jan. 2010); DOD 
Manual 6400.01-M-V3, Family Advocacy Program: Clinical Case Staff 
Meeting and Incident Determination Committee (draft provided to GAO in 
Jan. 2010); and DOD Manual 6400.01-M-V4, Family Advocacy Program: 
Guidelines for Clinical Intervention for Persons Reported as Domestic 
Abusers; (draft provided to GAO in Jan. 2010). 

[19] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-669]. 

[20] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540]. 

[21] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-669]. 

[22] According to this Defense Manpower Data Center official, data 
contained in the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry are more 
reliable, but this database contains only cases reported to Family 
Advocacy Program offices. In addition, we determined that the data 
from the Family Advocacy Program's Central Registry were sufficiently 
reliable for our purpose. 

[23] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540]. 

[24] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-577R]. 

[25] DOD and service policy require that cases reported to law 
enforcement also be reported to the Family Advocacy Program. However, 
DOD has no systematic method of matching the two databases to ensure 
that this policy is consistently followed. 

[26] DOD has emphasized that members of the reserve component who are 
not on federal active duty are considered civilian. 

[27] By formal protocol or informal practice, civilian law enforcement 
agencies may report domestic violence cases to DOD. However, DOD has 
no systematic method of ensuring that all civilian cases are reported. 

[28] Nonjudicial punishment, pursuant to Article 15 of the Uniform 
Code of Military Justice, could result in a number of punishments such 
as reducing a members' grade, forfeiture of pay, adding extra duty, 
and imposing restrictions on freedom. 

[29] The Defense Incident-Based Reporting System similarly may not 
contain Family Advocacy Program cases or information listed in items 2 
through 6. 

[30] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, risk 
factors are factors that are associated with a greater likelihood of 
intimate partner violence victimization or perpetration. Risk factors 
are contributing factors and may or may not be direct causes. Not 
everyone who is identified as "at risk" becomes involved in violence. 

[31] Department of Defense Manual 6400.1-M-1, Manual for Child 
Maltreatment and Domestic Abuse Incident Reporting System (Jul. 15, 
2005). This manual provides guidance related to the Family Advocacy 
Program's Central Registry, which is the database that contains 
information on domestic and child abuse cases reviewed by the 
services' clinical review boards. 

[32] Appendix I presents more detail on how we grouped participants 
into those who were eligible to receive Family Advocacy Program 
services and those who provided these and other responder services. 
When speaking with potential users, we discussed issues with enlisted 
males and females separately and male and female officers separately. 
We tailored our questions to each group's role in providing or 
receiving services. 

[33] Draft DOD Manual 6400.01-M-V4, Family Advocacy Program: 
Guidelines for Clinical Intervention for Persons Reported as Domestic 
Abusers (draft provided to GAO in Jan. 2010). 

[34] Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997, Pub. L. No. 104- 
208, § 658 (1996), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 922. 

[35] Department of Defense Instruction 6400.06, Domestic Abuse 
Involving DoD Military and Certain Affiliated Personnel (Aug. 21, 
2007). 

[36] Army, Army: Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention, 
Report 2010 (Jul. 2010). 

[37] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540]. 

[38] In appendix IV, DOD refers to this recommendation as 
recommendation 3. 

[39] In appendix IV, DOD refers to this recommendation as 
recommendation 4. 

[40] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540] and 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-577R]. 

[41] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-540] and 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-577R]. 

[42] Violence Against Women Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, § 40001 
et Seq. (1994). 

[End of section] 

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