This study in criminology, sociology, and the US Military, explores changes in the meaning and production of deviant populations in American military settings since 1941. It is designed to highlight the operation of an ethos of control as armed forces and society undergo historically unstable accommodation and conflict. The author examines time series data on organizational reaction to deviance in military settings ('Bad Paper Discharges,'¥ courts-martial, and administrative controls) in light of central characteristics of military settings (the social composition of officer and enlisted ranks, force levels, technological changes in war hardware and the distribution of risks faced by various kinds of soldiers). Propositions from the deviance literature concerning 1) the constancy of punishment, 2) the duration, intensity, and priority of sanctioning, and 3) cohesion and stress are examined in military contexts to discern the changing social control climates therein. Some sources of the shift are located in the role that risk plays in the system and the function of the officer corps as agents of social control. In short: the character of social institutions is knowable, in part, by studying the manner in which deviants therein are controlled, stigmatized and expelled. An extensive bibliography is provided.

Simmering racial tensions inflamed by discriminatory punitive measures sparked a violent confrontation aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while it was engaged in air strikes off the coast of North Vietnam. The US Navy charged Black sailors with rioting and assaults on White sailors in an incident referred to as a race riot, while totally ignoring violent unprovoked assaults committed by White sailors and Marines. Author Marv Truhe was a Navy JAG defense lawyer seeking justice for the accused Black sailors. Truhe possesses one of the most complete collections, personal or institutional, of original source documents of the Kitty Hawk incident and its legal aftermath—trial transcripts, investigation reports, hundreds of sworn statements and medical reports, federal court pleadings, and case files and witness interviews. How could virtually all official and unofficial accounts of the incident have placed blame for the incident solely on twenty-three Black sailors? How could they have been subjected to blatant racial injustices without their story being told until now? It is time to reveal the uncomfortable answers to these questions and expose the injustices perpetrated against these twenty-three young men.