Should you receive UCMJ for failing to do required counseling of your subordinates? Officers and Enlisted.

LTC (Join to see) , Sir, my question to then is how does this not qualify as dereliction of duty? It is a required part of the job that is repeatedly being ignored. Obviously circumstances happen, but if it's the same people month after month, that's laziness. I'd think that after a few individuals get charged with it, people might take it more seriously. I may be completely off on it, but I think it's a possible solution.

SGT (Join to see), it depends on what we are talking about. If we are talking about "dereliction of duty" in the common sense, then I think failure to counsel is dereliction. If we are talking about the legal sense, then it requires a conviction; i.e. you can't be a murderer without being convicted. The problem is that commanders (the people who would bring someone to court-martial for failure to counsel) are probably not going to prosecute, or even NJP, someone for the offense.

Even if they did get it to trial, would you vote guilty if you were a juror? Would you send a peer of yours to prison at hard labor, or give them a dishonorable discharge for not providing initial or periodic evaluation counseling? It seems a little harsh, even Draconian, to me. Again, there are so many other administrative, non-NJP, non-UCMJ things that can be done.

As for setting an example, as you suggest, I'm still waiting to hear back about how this has worked in the Air Force. If it is explicitly treated as a crime, as so explained in the above responses, then we should expect to see prosecution.

LTC (Join to see) I see what you're saying, I don't think it should result in the most extreme measures by any means. I see no issue with NPJ though. I've had leadership who never counseled me and it completely aggravated me as a junior soldier trying to get promoted. It shouldn't come to a point where a Soldier is requesting a legitimate counseling in order to get their NCO to do their job. Anyway i appreciate the information sir. Have a good day.

SGT (Join to see), the problem with NJP (please remember this as you advance) is that the Soldier can turn it down, which means either dropping the issue or going to court-martial. If you take the UCMJ route, including Art. 15, you must be prepared to go to trial. Otherwise, you could end up looking like a fool if the court-martial convening authority decides not to prosecute, or you could lose at trial. You have other tools; flag, bar to reenlistment, bad evals, etc.

I once missed counseling my subordinates within the the first thirty days of the rating period due to the fact that they were deployed at the JRTC for the first 24 when I arrived at the unit, and I didn't go tot he JRTC to take the platoon from the Staff Sergeant that had taken them. When they got back, one of my squad leaders was moved to the MP Desk and the CSM wanted to see his counseling file. I of course took the empty file, because I hadn't counseled him. Hell I hadn't even met him except to welcome them back from their training event and put them on 72 hour pass....I signed block 12 for dereliction of duty and my First Sergeant was asked if he wanted the CSM to fire me. I had been a Platoon Sergeant for less than a month.

1SG Jason Fitzpatrick interesting...because as you know, in most cases, we officers don't counsel each other unless it is rating time... (I am speaking of my superiors to me); and the counselings generally go like this... "So Chuck, how do you think you are doing?"... I made is a point to counsel young officers in my charge, as one of my jobs is/was leader development (improve the organization). As for Senior NCOs (1SG, CSMs etc), we certainly talked regularly (daily at least) about goals, vision, etc... but rarely did I do it in writing, unless there was an issue. Nevertheless, UCMJ is not the answer to this...

COL Charles Williams understood. The root cause of this entire thread is that there is a systemic failing in counseling. Some people only counsel the negative issues or incidents which in essence screws the Soldier. Spot inspections of counseling files / packets would only show the bad, not any of the good. When I was wearing the Diamond ... oh the good ole days...... I would have the Soldier's counseling packets that were "chosen" to participate in the monthly Urinalysis on my desk by the end of the day. I would inspect them to ensure that counseling was taking place and that it wa effective. I also took the opportunity to correct difficiencies in teh leaders who were conduct the poor or check the block counseling. I would usually address the issue with them, their first line supervisor (Rater) and then i would put a memorandum for record in their file so that if the issue came up again, i would be able to go back and show a pattern of dereliction as well as an opportunity presented to correct themselves... I believe that it worked pretty well.

1SG Jason Fitzpatrick No argument performance counseling and professional growth counseling is broken in the Army. I think we do OK with event oriented counseling... because we must get those done...

The transition of PLC to the shorter Warrior Leader Course eliminated all training on counseling and garrison type leader skills. The same happened in the LT courses...

Here is another good one for you, so you know this is not just an Army problem. I am now a HS teacher, and they said at the beginning of the year, we were going to have 6 classroom evaluations per year; I had one last year, my first year.

So, all this year I had one observation... then in the last 2 weeks, I had 5.... Apparently they were all to be done by Spring Break...

What silliness. I teach performance indicators and counseling to our Junior Cadets, and I am sure they could do better than our administrators do....

I had a SFC who would grab me on a weekly basis to "Play" PLT SGT so he could run off and be with his scouts...was good training for me and all, but not once did it reflect on any NCOER that I had filled the slot of PLT SGT which really sucked for me.