Do you think race has an impact on the level of punishments administered during Article 15s?

In all the combat units I was in. Everybody was OD green. Race didn't matter, if you break the rules, you pay the price. I don't know about training units.

It wasn't in my case. Four days UA got me reduced to Private and restricted to the area for 90 days and forfeiture of pay and allowances for that period. Both the Colonel and I were white. It did teach me a valuable lesson.

I would certainly hope not because if there was that would indicate systemic bias/racism amongst the Officers currently serving. Since Officers are bound by Manual of Courts Martial limiting maximum punishment available at an article 15, there would more likely be instances of individual bias but not systemic given the diversity of officers.

You can get quite a bit of data from your S-1 and the battalion EEO rep. There was a quarterly report called the QNSR that tracked awards and punishments by rank structure and by ethnicity. This was very helpful in doing trend analysis to help gauge the EO climate. If you paid attention to it you could nip stuff in the bud.

A cautionary note on UCMJ action and statistical data. Just because a unit has a low UCMJ rate doesn't necessarily indicate they are highly disciplined outfit. I can think of one unit that the reason was indicative of the leaders allowing anything to go and only administering UCMJ for things like Drug abuse and DUI's. Items that had mandatory reporting and action and were visible to higher echelons. Conversely there was another unit in Germany where the leaders issued UCMJ for anything and everything.

I really don't believe one-off anecdotes have a place in your proposal unless your research is to determine bias. The statistics are out there, so why not put an inquiry to DA to access Army-wide UCMJ records. The IG can most likely be the source for your database query. You will have to explain your purpose to the IG - probably submitting the request in writing.

No idea. Most guys with Article 15s I knew were a reflection of the population from whence they came, but that means nothing.

I would add however that for a Masters level course--and if this research proposal leads to a published paper-- for me, I'd generally skip anecdotal evidence save for any personal experience I myself were witness to, and stick to well supported empirical evidence from credible sources. Asking people how they feel about the possibility of racial bias doesn't make for strong evidence of anything and can lead to a type of representative bias leading one to think that the results of asking for a representative sample (random or not) of opinion reflects what the actual facts are, when in fact, empirical data may not support what people believe to be true.

At the very least, be judicious and limited in your use of opinion.

Back in the day, race, gender, and religion affected everything. Punishment, promotion, assignments, harassment level, you name it. Whenever I see a current article that says some group is whatever, I never see an analysis that deals with the "as compared to what". If you want your paper to be worthwhile, make sure it's in context vs. narrowly stated. Back in the day, "examples" were made more frequently on the minorities hanging out on the fantail. By the time I punched out after my last Skipper job and sitting lots of promotion boards over time, I've seen the continuum of change. Much less bias can occur without getting caught. There are those who still insist on getting caught, especially those who won't keep their pistol in their holster. Two reasons we likely see less now is more diversity among the grades. More voices in the grapevine pointing out bias. Second is the extreme process and regulation stuff that some would argue goes too far. Analytics that figures lie/liar's figure types peddle. There's still bias but it has been driven more underground so you have to have sharper senses to see it.

Don't have any statistics but I can remember a lot that I chaired and the offence they were for, in three units, but can't remember race. Gave an Art 15 to one of my WMs and can't remember her race or what she looked like.
I don't believe it's a case of failing memory, just remember most looked scared out of their wits, race wasn't important.

I didn't mean to bombard you with so much, however, what you'd asked obv piqued my curiosity, that's why it got my mental gears spinning...I was just curious...what was the specific class title? For what major? Did you eventually want to go PhD at all? Law, possibly (incl what's termed an LLM, a masters attorneys do after doing their JD)? I'd be most interested to hear more, no rush, whenever convenient, hope all that stuff might at least be of some possible use, if anything else occurs to me, I'll try to send it also...quite interesting, most decidedly intellectually offbeat question, honest....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_law

This looked good....