Unless you are a member of the British Armed Forces or know people in the army, you probably did not think about how the institution deals with a fault perpetrated by those of its ranks. Before starting to seek the British army’s judicial system, and I. Soldiers committing serious crimes abroad. From this, I had reconstituted that the British armed forces had their own police forces, judicial system and installation of detention and that this system dealt with offenses which went from relatively minor – as not to go to a quarter work after a night spent drinking – for the most serious – for example, to allegations of war crimes.
Initially, nothing had seemed strange to me that the soldiers had his own sybumble of justice. After all, a large part of what I have just mentioned testifies to exclusive offenses to a military context in which the jurisdictional complexities of deployments abroad are more confused by the violent nature of military work. In addition, the existence of a system distinct from military justice is not distinct from the British context and it is not something new, having existed in one form or another for centuries. For many, the justification is obvious: military work is unprecedented, dangerous and violent. In addition to “the unique nature of the service environment”, there are also two other important points to report. First, there is a requirement under international humanitarian law so that organized armed groups can enforce discipline and ensure compliance with the law. Second, military justice is portable (that is, it can be taken abroad), which means that service personnel cannot simply act with impunity if it is deployed in a Framework where the domestic justice system does not in accordance with human rights.
Although the system’s ability to deal with offenses that take place in operational contexts is also recognized by researchers, the justification most frequently provided to maintain a distinct justice system nevertheless puts a conception of the institution in which activities operational are THE Definition of the experience and the ultimate goal of all forms of military work.
When I started my research, I was curious to know how the rights of service personnel were navigated in relation to these operational pressures. My initial reading had indicated to me towards military judicial centers as one of the most deeply nested spaces in the debate surrounding the rights of military personnel. Consequently, between 2021-2023, I made observations in the courtroom in one of the permanent military centers of the United Kingdom. However, out of the 15 hearings that I observed in the context of this project, only four linked to distinctly “military” offenses – the others implied accusations of assault, blows and sexual assault and rape, Scrolling in the familiar spaces of bars, swimming pools, rooms and offices. The more I observed, the more I became curious about how these apparently “non -military” offenses had become the concern of a military justice system.
At the time of carrying out this research (2021-2023), and continues to be increasing pressure on the army’s judicial system to demonstrate its ability to investigate effectively and continue sexual offenses and other “ ` unacceptable behaviors “perpetrated by soldiers against their soldiers against their colleagues. Indeed, the control of the military’s responses to sexual delinquency indicated that the system is characterized by low conviction rates, a lack of support provided to victims and significant failures in the survey of these offenses. This led to calls for rape cases and serious sexual assaults to be withdrawn from military jurisdiction when committed in the United Kingdom.
In March 2024, following similar levels of control, the Canadian Parliament introduced legislation to strip the army of its powers to investigate and pursue all the sexual offenses committed by its staff on domestic soil. However, in the United Kingdom, only small concessions to military jurisdiction on such offenses have been made. Often, this is justified with regard to the existing failures of the civil criminal justice system in the response to sexual violence. However, if cases of sexual violence and other unacceptable behaviors belong to a military justice system (or should be subsumed in the civil system) was not the central objective of my research. Instead, I sought to examine what the daily functioning of one of the main army mechanisms used to respond to “ unacceptable behavior ” could tell us how violence is designed and responded by the institution, and what were the implications of this on the daily life of military personnel.
In the end, my research revealed that military exceptionalism works as a powerful order concept which regulates how violence by and against military personnel is known by those of the Center Judiciace. Military exceptionalism is a concept used by Megan Mackenzie in his monograph in 2023, Good soldiers do not rape: the stories that we are racing on military sexual violenceRefer to the allegedly “unique nature of military service and to the estimated place that the army has within society and public imagination” (p.20). Military exceptionalism is shaped by ideals of “good soldiers” and “good soldiers” – “which are constructed as necessarily white, male, exclusive and reproduced by the regulation of sex and the exclusion of women and racialized groups” (p.9) – This allows the institution to be understood not only as special, but as responsible for the various standards and laws in relation to the “civil world”.
Works of art that adorned the walls to the explicit declarations according to which the soldiers were more likely to be of “good character” than civilians, the daily operations of the judicial center were oriented around the hypotheses of the innate goodness of the institution military. These allusions with institutional and individual virtue were accompanied by powerful materials and discursive reminders of proximity apparently always present in the center with war. Indeed, throughout my research, the conceptions of military work was mainly regulated by an understanding of the proximity of the soldier with operational duty, danger and risk. By putting forward the highly destructive armed violence as a determining and timeless character of military life, the temporal and spatial dynamics of the judicial center emphasizes the noble and sacrificial nature of military service. In doing so, the military is considered exposed – but significantly not as authors of violence, thus framing the use of violence “ uncontrolled ” by military staff as something abnormal to good military service, Something that “belongs elsewhere”, obscuring its centrality to support the military institution and, more broadly, the liberal state. It was a shocking juxtaposition to the intimate stories of bodily violation which took place in the hearing rooms themselves.
In addition, thanks to the presentation of the military justice system designed to serve a unique and exceptional institution, the discussion on the misdeeds of daily violence was oriented far from the survivors of victims and the attention was rather turned towards the impact of these offenses on the institution itself. Indeed, during hearings, consideration was given to the way in which sexual misconduct, and racial abuses could have an impact on operational efficiency and unitary cohesion. Rather than being supervised mainly in terms of prejudice to the persons involved in the case, the hearings have located offenses in a broader landscape of the threat in which the military institution `Coherent and effective ‘itself is itself Constituted as a potential victim of offenses (but in particular not as accomplice of the perpetration of these offenses). In this day, the institution is able to demonstrate that sexual violence and other “unacceptable behaviors” are able to seriously; It is in its interest to adopt apparently progressive political measures such as zero tolerance approach in sexual offense. However, as Meghana Nayak reminds us, sexual violence and other “unacceptable behaviors” for the army, but Only insofar as they interfere with the operational preparation of the institution.
However, during my work on the ground, the testimonies of the witnesses and the declarations of impact on the victims read aloud in the courtroom disturbed the neat stories of the institution as a progressive and exceptional employer, which has been able to effectively face sexual violence and others “ unacceptable behaviors ”. For example, the words of women who had experienced rapes and sexual assaults expelled how, even after a guilty verdict was made, sexual violence was still variously experienced as a period of sustainable memory, future concern, lasting damage and daily adaptation. Their words underlined the continuous failure of the institution to respond appropriately to such offenses, leaving traces of unruly stories which did not correspond perfectly to the categories of guilt / innocence, military / civil, progress / failure, closure / uncertainty.
My observations reveal the fragile and illusory nature of the efforts underlying the promise of the institution to fight against sexual violence and other unacceptable behaviors, but the military judicial center is only a small part of the judicial system of the army. As such, it is necessary to continue in -depth, qualitative and critical informed research on other elements of this system, for example the process of summary offenses or the complaint system. In addition, given the difficulties in carrying out research with military staff, in my stay at the judicial center, I did not engage directly with people who have experienced sexual violence and other “unacceptable behaviors”. As such, the question of how military justice is experienced or has experienced meaning by those of these systems remain open.
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