Gov. Elect Scott needs to look at Veteran's Courts

This is a good start in addressing the growing justice crisis but while Scott's advisors are looking at pro-active ways of reducing the inmate population, they also need to look at a huge factor they are not talking about. Our veterans.

Scott team: Ease prison policy
By DARA KAM
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

TALLAHASSEE — Conservatives have been known to be tough on crime. Now they're saying they have to be tough on criminal justice spending as well.

Rick Scott's "law and order" team is telling Florida's incoming governor, who considers himself a conservative's conservative, to cut costs by diverting nonviolent offenders to drug treatment and requiring inmates to get an education and vocational training.

Those actions, which the transition team said could reduce the number of criminals returning to prison and allow the state to stop building new prisons, sound more like past Democratic suggestions than traditional conservative approaches to criminal justice.

But that's exactly where Florida may be headed, following a new national movement heralded by conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist and William Bennett.

They are among a host of dramatic changes that Scott's transition teams for Florida's government proposed last week as he prepares to take office . His inauguration is Jan. 4 in Tallahassee.

But the criminal justice ideas also are unique among the teams' recommendations in their departure from traditional Republican views. Instead of the "lock 'em up" approach to crime, the new recommendations echo the advice social progressives have been trying, unsuccessfully, to put in place for years - spend less on prisons and more on treatment, intervention and prevention.

Scott's advisers suggested a radical revamp of the state's criminal justice system, which houses more than 100,000 prisoners and has swelled by more than 1,000 percent during the past four decades.

Faced with bulging prison populations and a rate of one in three prisoners winding up back behind bars, the advisers concede that being tough on crime hasn't worked.

On top of that, there are ever-tightening budgetary constraints.

Fiscal conservatives realized that "we were not only not getting good value for the money being spent, but getting bad value and bad results," said Linda Mills, a criminal justice consultant who served on Scott's transition team for law and order.

Then law-and-order conservatives began to accept similar conclusions about mandatory- minimum sen tences and other tough-on-crime laws, Mills said. Some, she said, even have publicly asked for forgiveness for having played a part in exploding prison growth. Now they are leading the charge toward rehabilitation.
read more here
Scott team Ease prison policy

20 States already have them. According to the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs  1.7 million veterans were residing in Florida in 2009 which would make sense for Florida to have Veterans Courts added to what they want to do to take care of veterans instead of locking them up.

Contact: Sandy Adkins
Communications Specialist
National Center for State Courts
757.259.1515


State courts honor veterans by providing specialized programs

Williamsburg, Va. (Nov. 11, 2010) — Throughout the U.S. today, ceremonies, parades, and other special events are taking place to honor the nation's war veterans. But every day, a growing number of our country's state courts are recognizing veterans in a very different and significant way — by establishing specialized courts and programs designed to address the social and legal issues associated with servicemen and women.

Currently at least 20 states have veterans courts: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. At least 10 other states are considering the issue either through studies or proposed legislation.
read more here

State courts honor veterans