Veterans Court Success, 83% Don't Reoffend

County veterans’ court unveiled: 2nd chance for heroes
Livingston Daily
Lisa Roose-Church
November 19, 2014

“In Michigan, 83 percent of the people who have gone through veterans’ court don’t reoffend; it works,” Reader said.

Carl Pardon salutes at the unveiling of the county’s new Veterans’ Treatment Court on Wednesday at the Livingston County Judicial Center in Howell.
(Photo: Lisa Roose-Church/Daily Press and Argus)

A veteran’s mindset is that two kinds of people exist in the world: Enemy combatants and comrades in arms, and if they don’t know whom to trust, they trust no one, a local veteran said.

Veterans are trained to be a “self-sustaining, force of one”, and then when they come home after combat, the military doesn’t tell them “we lied, you need help,” said Bryan Bradford, a disabled veteran of the U.S. Army military police, serving in the Pacific Rim.

“That’s what we’re here for,” said Bradford, who is one of the 10 veterans volunteering to mentor men and women who come through Livingston County’s new Veterans’ Treatment Court. “It’s a second chance.

“It’s an opportunity for them to have a mentor who is a veteran to help show them the ropes. These kids come home and they are top-field dragsters and they’re adrenaline junkies, and they just don’t know how to turn it off,” he added. “They need and deserve a little special treatment because they’ve done things most people can’t fathom.”

District Judge Carol Sue Reader, who will preside over the court, unveiled the new effort at a meet-and-greet presentation Wednesday at the Livingston County Judicial Center on Highlander Way in Howell.

The court is based on a team concept involving Reader, a probation officer, a defense advocate and representatives from the prosecutor’s office and treatment providers, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and regional veterans’ centers. It also received support from Brighton-area attorney Neal Nielsen.

Reader told the audience that Veterans’ Treatment Court is a non-adversarial, post-sentencing program that works toward returning military veterans to a productive and law-abiding status in society.

“Those who serve us to preserve our freedom, they have a price they pay,” the judge said. “There’s no normal. We want to prevent that. We can’t do anything about what happened in the past, but we can start today to make it better in the future.”

Veterans, like Bradford, praised the court’s creation of the Veterans’ Treatment Court.

Bradford said 22 veterans a day commit suicide and their No. 1 question is: Why was I spared? He said the general public doesn’t seem to know that “post-traumatic stress disorder is contagious,” affecting the whole family. As an example, he shared the story of a couple he is helping. The wife commented that she was going to tell her husband that if he doesn’t straighten up, she would divorce him.
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