DD Form 2711 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2711, Initial Custody Classification, March 2013, and it exists to Initial Custody Classification. What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
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.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
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.
Fill all of it, marking inapplicable items N/A. A record with gaps cannot later demonstrate whether the gap was a decision or an oversight, which is exactly the ambiguity documentation exists to remove. Dates go in the form's own format — on a document that crosses service lines, an ambiguous date is a real hazard rather than a pedantic one.
Understand what the Privacy Act Statement is doing on the page. It exists because collecting personal data from an individual triggers a duty to explain the collection: under what authority, for what purpose, to whom the information may routinely go, and whether you are obliged to answer. That explanation precedes the fields for the obvious reason — afterwards it is merely a notice, beforehand it is a basis for deciding.
What the signature block asks for is an act, not a text. Ink on a printed copy performs that act; a digital signature bound to your credential performs it electronically, CAC-based in most Defense systems. Typing your name performs nothing, since anyone with the file could type the same characters. Enter the date at the same moment: the certification is a statement about a point in time and needs one recorded.
Every item on the standing defect list undermines the record in the same way — it leaves a question the file cannot answer later. Obsolete edition, empty mandatory boxes, illegible scanned handwriting, non-conforming dates, missing signature or date. 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 4 pages and asks for approximately 78 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Fillable and printable are not two presentations of one file but two different objects. One holds your entries as structured data within the document; the other is a static picture meant to meet a pen. Since a DD form frequently moves outside the organization that created it, the durability of the entry matters more here than on a record that stays in one drawer. Typed text reproduces indefinitely; handwriting degrades at every copy.
What the form asks for
- 1. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- 2. Interviewer name.
- 3. Press space bar to mark X in first box if pre-trial, second box if post-trial.
- Classification worksheet. 11. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 12. Time.
- 13. Interviewer name.
- 14. X first box if pre-trial, second box if post-trial.
- 4. Identification. a. Prisoner name (last, first, middle) (also known as).
- 16. Administrative factors. a. Suicide risk. (1) How do you feel about being here?
- (2) Have you ever thought about committing suicide? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- If (1) or (2) is yes: (3) Have you ever been disciplined in the service or fired from a job because of drug or alcohol use? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- 17. Management factors. a. What charge(s) are you confined for?
- b. Substance abuse. (1) Have you ever used drugs or alcohol? Drugs: X first box if no, second box if yes.
- Alcohol: X first box if no, second box if yes.
- (2) Have you ever used drugs/alcohol in this enlistment? Drugs: X first box if no, second box if yes.
- Alcohol: X first box if no, second box if yes.
- If (1) or (2) is yes: (3) Have you ever been disciplined in the service or fired from a job because of drug or alcohol use? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- (4) Has drug/alcohol use ever led to family problems or conflicts? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- (5) Have you ever been arrested while under the influence of drugs or alcohol? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- (6) Has use of drugs/alcohol resulted in other problems, such as blackouts or loss of friends? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- c. Pending charges/warrants/detainers. Do you have any outstanding warrants/detainers or additional pending charges? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- If yes, explain.
- d. History of violence. (1) Have you ever assaulted another person? X first box if no, second box if yes.
- If yes: (2) Non-physical altercation? X first box if no, second box if yes.
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Cross-referenced documents are found by series and number, with nothing further required. That the DD sequence is unified across the Department means a cited number identifies one form and no other, which is the practical payoff of centralizing the numbering in the first place.
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.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
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?
- DD Form 2711, Initial Custody Classification, 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?