Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2712 — DD Form 2712, Prisoner Evaluation, March 2013 — was established to Prisoner Evaluation, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
That decision has consequences you will notice. Because not stated prescribes the form for the Department as a whole, and not stated maintains it on the Department's behalf, the same blank passes between the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Space Force, the Coast Guard when operating under Defense jurisdiction, the defense agencies and the combatant commands without translation. A clerk in one component reads a record created in another and finds the fields where they expect them.
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.
Verify the printed edition against not stated first. Field structure shifts between editions, and the office that receives your record is reading the current one. That office may sit outside your service, which removes even the informal accommodation you might expect from a colleague who used the old version last month.
Where a specific field is genuinely unclear, the instructions printed on the form come first and not stated governs where the two do not agree.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 33 entries.
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
- Report date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- 1. Prisoner name (last, first, middle).
- 3. Branch of service.
- 4. Housing unit.
- 5. Detail.
- 6. Custody level.
- 7. Period covered: From (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Period covered: To (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 8. Completed by: X first box if dorm supervisor, second box if work supervisor, or third box if other.
- If other, specify.
- Section 1 - Attitude and Traits (completed by dorm and work supervisors). Conduct. Enter number from 1 (Unsatisfactory) to 3 (Conforms) to 5 (Exemplary).
- Discipline. Enter number from 1 (Disciplinary Action) to 3 (Minor Infractions) to 5 (No Infractions).
- Supervision required. Enter number from 1 (Constant) to 3 (Moderate) to 5 (Minimal).
- Attitude toward supervisor. Enter number from 1 (Poor) to 3 (Borderline) to 5 (Respectful).
- Cooperation. Enter number from 1 (Uncooperative) to 3 (Moderate) to 5 (Cooperative).
- Personality. Enter number from 1 (Unfavorable) to 3 (Fair) to 5 (Exceptional).
- Group conformity. Enter number from 1 (Easily led) to 3 (Complies) to 5 (Self-reliant).
- Influence on others. Enter number from 1 (Disruptive) to 3 (Neutral) to 5 (Positive).
- Initiative. Enter number from 1 (Minimal) to 3 (Average) to 5 (Energetic).
- Temperament. Enter number from 1 (Volatile) to 3 (Indifferent) to 5 (Stable).
- Total points, section 1.
- Section 2 - Work performance (completed by work supervisor only). Quality of work. Enter number from 1 (Poor) to 3 (Acceptable) to 5 (Outstanding).
- Productivity. Enter number from 1 (Minimal) to 3 (Average) to 5 (Excellent output).
- Total for Section 2.
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.
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.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
Understanding why editions change explains why checking them is not optional. Revision follows directive reissue, changes in what data is required, and amendments to mandatory notice text — decisions made at Department level and communicated through publication rather than notification. The file you saved does not update itself, so the edition date at download is what you rely on.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2712?
- DD Form 2712, Prisoner Evaluation, 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?