Every entry in the Defense records system exists because some decision needed a documented basis, and DD Form 2711-1 is one of those instruments: DD Form 2711-1, Custody Reclassification, March 2013, created to Custody Reclassification. The reason it carries a DD number rather than a service designation is structural — the Department maintains a single body of forms for matters that arise identically in every service, so that a record created in one component remains intelligible in another.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.
The sequence printed on the form is the sequence in which a reviewer will read it, and the two should agree. Header data frames every entry below it; the substantive fields depend on that frame; the certification stands at the end because its whole function is to vouch for what came before. Entries made out of sequence commonly contradict entries made earlier.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
Unclear entries are resolved from the printed instructions first and from not stated where the two texts diverge.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 34 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.
The xfdl file is a survival from an earlier phase of Defense form automation. Xfdl is the IBM Lotus Forms format, and for a long period it was the Department's standard for electronic forms — fielded broadly enough that it still appears in distribution sets today. It opens in IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or a compatible client and nowhere else; a pdf reader will report it as damaged, which is not a fault in the file.
Every format is free, as published government documents are. A note on tools, though — the interactive field layer that makes a fillable pdf useful is precisely the part browser viewers handle least reliably. Save the file, open it in a full pdf reader, and the fields behave as the form's designer intended.
What the form asks for
- 1. Interviewer name.
- 2. Press space bar to mark X in first box if detained, second box if adjudged.
- 3. Identification. a. Prisoner name (last, first, middle).
- c. Release date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- d. Present custody.
- e. Housing unit.
- 4. Administrative factors. a. Suicide risk. X first box if no, second box if yes.
- b. Physical health problem. X first box if no, second box if yes.
- c. Mental health problem. X first box if no, second box if yes.
- d. Special quarters. X first box if no, second box if yes.
- e. Victim/witness notification program. X first box if no, second box if yes.
- 7. Override. a. X first box if no, second box if yes, or third box if not applicable).
- f. Sex offender registration requirements. X first box if no, second box if yes.
- 5. Classification criteria. a. Offense severity (enter 1 through 8).
- b. Number of disciplinary reports (last 90 days). None = 0, one = 1, two = 2, three or more = 4.
- c. Severest disciplinary report. None = 0, Category 1 = 1, Category 2 = 2, Category 3 = 3, Category 4 = 4, Category 5 = 5.
- d. Number of negative spot reports (last 90 days). 0 - 3 = 0, 4 - 6 = 2, 7 - 10 = 4, 11+ = 8.
- e. Number of positive observation reports (last 90 days). None = 0, one or more = -1.
- f. Current programming. Completed treatment program = -2, Involved but not completed = -1, No program = 0, Failed or dropped = 2.
- g. Job performance. Outstanding = -2, Above average or higher = -1, average = 0, below average = 2.
- h. Length of sentence time remaining. Detainee or 0 - 90 days = 0, 91 days - 1 year = 1, 1+ to 3 years = 2, 3+ to 5 years = 3, 5+ to 10 years = 5, 10+ years = 7, Life/death = 8.
- i. Pending charges/warrants/detainers. No = eligible to move from minimum to trustee, Yes = not eligible.
- j. Total points.
- 6. Classification decision. a. X first box if reduce (0 - 6 points), second box if same (7 - 10 points), or third box if increase (11+ points).
The completed form goes to the office named in not stated or in local implementing procedure, and it is worth keeping a copy before it goes. On a Department form the destination is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint staff — and recovering a document that has crossed an organizational boundary is a slower business than retrieving one from a file down the hall.
When DD Form 2711-1 cites another form, the citation is self-sufficient. The DD series is a single sequence administered at Department level, so the number resolves to exactly one document without any need to establish which component issued it — a convenience that exists only because the sequence was never allowed to fork.
It helps to see the DA and DD sequences as what they are: separate registries with separate custodians. One serves a single service under a service proponent, the other serves the Department under not stated or an equivalent office, and neither was ever indexed against the other. A number that appears in both systems points to two unrelated documents, which is why reading the prefix comes before reading the digits.
A form is downstream of the policy that requires it, and revision usually starts there: a directive is reissued, a collection requirement is altered, notice language is updated by statute. The form is republished as a consequence. Since none of that reaches individual users, an archived copy quietly becomes wrong, and verifying not stated each time you download is the whole remedy.
What you have here is the document and a description of it, which is a different thing from guidance. This page is not an organ of the Department, gives no legal or procedural advice, and makes no representation about the outcome of any filing; the offices that administer the requirement are the only ones positioned to answer that. Applicability, eligibility and procedural questions belong to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2711-1?
- DD Form 2711-1, Custody Reclassification, March 2013
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?