Veterans can get help instead of jail time but not in all states

Why should it matter where a veteran lives? They serve this one nation side by side. They come home to different states in this one nation. So why are veterans courts not in all states? There are 104 veterans courts. California has the most veterans and they have 11. Texas has the next highest veterans population. They also have 11. Florida has the third highest. We only have 3.

Veterans can get help instead of jail time
MSNBC
By Erin Delmore
12/28/13

No one said coming home would be easy.

Nick Stefanovic, a Marine combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had been warned by a Vietnam War veteran who let him know about the combat wounds that never heal.

“You made a sacrifice,” Stefanovic recalls being told. “This is something you have to live with.”

For Nick, that meant living out of his car, homeless and alienated, with a crippling addiction to the painkillers he popped to keep the demons away.

“I’m just going to take these pills until I die,” he remembers thinking.

Out of cash and pills, the former sergeant E-5 walked into a bank in 2009 with a stolen checkbook. He flashed his own ID and signed his name on the check at the counter.

Nick was busted. It saved his life, he says. “Being arrested is the first way of getting help.”

Rather than serve time jail, Stefanovic, along with the thousands of other veterans suffering from addiction and mental health problems, was offered a lifeline. Like the civilian drug and mental health courts that pull offenders with documented medical issues out of the traditional criminal court dockets, veterans treatment courts apply the same principles to former service members. Judges across the country are allowing the growing number of ex-military men and women to choose a treatment program instead of serving time.

“When you come home, what helped you survive on the battlefield doesn’t turn off immediately,” said Col. David Sutherland, co-founder of the Dixon Center and a former special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury are “the signature wounds of these wars,” Sutherland told msnbc. Nearly a third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans treated at V.A. hospitals have been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and one in six suffers from a substance abuse disorder.
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The History Justice for Vets

The first Veterans Treatment Court was founded by the Honorable Robert Russell in Buffalo, New York in January, 2008, after he noticed an increase in the number of veterans appearing on his Drug Court and Mental Health Court dockets. Judge Russell saw firsthand the transformative power of military camaraderie when veterans on his staff assisted a veteran in one of his treatment courts, but also recognized that more could be done to ensure veterans were connected to benefits and treatment earned through military service. In response, Judge Russell asked his local U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and volunteer veterans in the community to join in creating a new court docket that would focus exclusively on justice-involved veterans. 

As of June 30, 2012 there are  104 Veterans Treatment Courts in our country with hundreds more in the planning stages. They involve cooperation and collaboration with traditional partners found in Drug Courts and Mental Health Courts, such as the

Judge Russell ensures veterans in court receive the treatment and services they have earned

prosecutor, defense counsel, treatment provider, probation, and law enforcement. Added to this interdisciplinary team are representatives of the Veterans Health Administration and the Veterans Benefit Administration– as well as State Departments of Veterans Affairs, Vet Centers, Veterans Service Organizations, Department of Labor, volunteerVeteran Mentors, and other veterans support groups. Veterans Treatment Courts admit only those veterans with a clinical diagnosis of a substance abuse and/or mental health disorder.