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Special courts for veterans
They steer troubled veterans toward the rehabilitation services they need
Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.
It has taken a long time, but fortunately special courts are now beginning to open around the country for military veterans whose troubles with the law are possibly linked to service-related drug, alcohol or mental health issues.
As Las Vegas Sun reporter Megan McCloskey wrote in Thursday’s paper, a Veterans Treatment Court will open in the fall if the District Court’s application for a $250,000 federal grant is approved.
Momentum for veterans courts picked up in 2006, according to USA Today, when a judge in Rochester, N.Y., began having a Veterans Affairs representative present when veterans appeared in his drug court. That same year California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that gives judges discretion to give veterans alternative sentences in some cases.
The first full-fledged Veterans Treatment Court began early last year by the city court in Buffalo, N.Y. Its goal is to keep veterans who are nonviolent offenders out of jail.
McCloskey reported that Buffalo’s model has since been adopted in Anchorage, Alaska; Orange County, Calif.; Rochester, N.Y., and Tulsa, Okla. She also reported that 20 other court systems around the country are considering the idea.
All veterans have gone through training that prepared them for combat and for the disciplined culture of the military. For some, just that alone made their return to civilian life difficult. And what veterans who go through combat witness and experience can make them even more susceptible to difficulties.
This service to our country needs to be recognized if later their unresolved stress contributes to landing them in court.
Once before a judge, veterans are evaluated and offered treatment programs that can last for a year. Only if they fail to complete the programs are they given traditional sentences. To help them pull through, fellow veterans from the community act as their mentors. The courts under way are experiencing a high level of success.
Our hope is that if the federal funding is not awarded, enough local money can be found to start such a court.
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Picking up where last week's discussion left off -- why do veterans, or anyone else, rate special courts?
Everything you mentioned here has a name that's been part of the law since way, way back when -- "mitigating factors."
Easy answer. Judicial discretion has been removed through the use of Mandatory Minimums. Mitigating factors now no longer have a place.It is if you are guilty then the judge must sentence you to a certain time.
Deferment and other means of rehabilitation have become the solution.
If you want it to be more simple eliminate Mandatory minimums
Aside from that in the case of veterans the US has severely dropped the ball and increased levels of violent crime, drug and alcohol crime and domestic violence are the result.
You cannot expect to reverse months of turning a man into a killing machine to be rectified with handing him a set of release papers without a means of integration into the community.
JSin
I understand the need for this but I have a hard time with a "special" court.
This country is starting to fall on hard times because almost everybody fits into a "special" category.
If a rehab program has merit then by all means work that angle. I am just thoroughly stymied as to why everybody needs to be "special".
I don't think a cookie-cutter approach is warranted. I really think every case, not just veterans or some other "special" category, needs to be examined and dealt with appropriately.
The days of the hanging judge should be over, but we also don't need a pacifist judge either.
It's certainly an injustice that former soldiers who turn to drugs as a way of coping with the return to civilian life should be thrown in prison for a nonviolent offense that hurts only the drug abuser himself.
But I think I have a better suggestion for how to deal with that injustice. Instead of inventing special courts so that former soldiers can be treated as if they were legally superior to everyone else -- why not just stop imprisoning anybody at all for nonviolent drug offenses?
Any reason you could give that would make it reasonable not to imprison former soldiers with non-violent drug problems would be just as good a reason not to imprison anybody else with a non-violent drug problem. You don't need special courts; you just need to realize that the government's campaign for drug prohibition is stupid, destructive, and is destroying the lives of all too many peaceful people.
Charles Johnson,
Southern Nevada Alliance of the Libertarian Left
The VA has multiple programs available for vets.
All you have to do is WANT to get help, and USE the help they offer. If they tell you there is currently no room, then keep requesting help. As once said, "the squeeky wheel gets the grease."
If you can't work through the VA system on your own, there are several service organizations that know the 'in's and out's' of the VA. The Disabled American Veterans (DAV) has helped tens of thousands of vets over the years get the help and assistance they need.