We've known for 20 years how to solve a lot of these problems on a large scale, and abolitionist reforms are a big part of that agenda. Anyone clued into what the VA in AZ is doing about homelessness and incarcerated vets? I should know that by now without having to dig.
Anyway, hit the link at the bottom for an article about veterans dying for lack of health care.
--------------
From the Barracks to the Homeless Shelter
Homelessness Among Vets Persists
New America Media, News Report
Aaron Glantz , Posted: Nov 11, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO – Fifty-four-year-old David Harness carries a red, white and blue Department of Veterans Affairs’ identification card around his neck. His face weathered, his mustache speckled with grey, he looks past the reporter standing in front of him and off into the street.
“Tonight I’m on the street because I don’t have a place to stay,” he says.
Harness has been homeless for much of the last two decades. When he first got out of the Navy in the late ‘70s, he found work at San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, repairing a host of war vessels and commercial ships that came in for repair.
Since the shipyard shut down in 1994, Harness has hardly had any work.
“It’s hard for veterans because if you don’t have a place to clean up, take a shower, do what you got to do, how you gonna get a job?” he asks.
Harness is not the only veteran in this difficult situation. A new study released Tuesday by the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that approximately 131,000 veterans were homeless at some point in 2008. One out four homeless people, and one out of three homeless men, is a veteran.
According to the report, veterans were more than twice as likely to be homeless as those who never served in the military. And while most of the veterans sleeping on the street had fought in earlier wars, a growing number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans reported receiving homeless services from the VA.
Black veterans are largely over-represented. Despite making up only 10 percent of the veteran population, they make up 45 percent of the homeless veterans population.
The number of homeless veterans is “shocking,” according to Steve Berg, the alliance’s vice president.
“Our report shows that the problems that we’ve had for 20 years have not been solved,” says Berg.
If nothing is done, Berg says he expects the number of homeless Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans to rise in the future. That’s because hundreds of thousands of veterans of current wars are coming home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and other mental injuries that – if left untreated – can create a downward spiral that may take years to fully realize.
“We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to prevent the problems of the previous generation from repeating themselves,” he says.
There was some good news in the report, however. The alliance reported that the number of homeless veterans had actually dropped since 2007 – from 195,000 to 131,000 in 2008.
That drop was primarily attributed to the government’s early intervention to help veterans before they became homeless – by handing out transitional housing assistance, emergency rent payments, and facilitating “rapid re-housing.”
The report comes one day after Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki told reporters in Washington that, “President Obama and I are personally committed to ending homelessness among veterans in the next five years.”
In addition to homeless services, the administration’s plan includes “preventive measures” like planning for incarcerated veterans re-entering society, supportive services for low-income veterans and their families and a national referral center to link veterans to local service providers.
“Our plan enlarges the scope of the VA’s efforts to combat homelessness,” said Shinseki. “In the past, the VA focused largely on getting homeless veterans off the streets. Our five-year plan aims also at preventing them from ever ending up homeless.”
On Monday, Berg of the National Alliance to End Homeless declared that he was “cautiously optimistic” about Shinseki’s proposals.
On the streets of San Francisco, Harness, the Navy veteran, offers a reality check to policymakers in Washington.
“I’m seeing a lot of young people on the street who are 24 or 25 and they look like they’re really not taking care of themselves,” he says.
They shouldn’t wait for help from the government, he says, because that may never come.
“My advice to them is to keep doing what you know best,” he says. “Just do what you can.”
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Showing posts with label veteran prisoners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label veteran prisoners. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Vets, PTSD, Addiction: Criminal?
Why Are We Locking Up Traumatized Veterans for Their Addictions Instead of Offering Them Treatment?
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
Posted on November 11, 2009
The report reflects a year’s worth of outreach to veterans and veterans’ advocates across the country, and a distillation of their most creative, innovative and optimistic responses to the problem.
Gen. Steven Xenakis, MD, Special Advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Warrior and Family Support, brought a message of official support to a teleconference announcing the release of the report:
“250,000 soldiers is a large number of Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen who have been affected,” he said. “It is so important that people are made aware of the issues, and that we follow up with the best action plans we can find … We in this country have a responsibility to assist and support them.”
“Courts, as a way of dealing with large numbers of people with substance abuse problems, are a very slow and expensive way to go,” explained Dan Abrahamson, the Drug Policy Alliance’s Director of Legal Affairs. “You need a courtroom and a judge, and all the players from prosecutors to defense attorneys. Providing treatment straight up requires far fewer resources and far less investment for far greater returns.”
Guy Gambill, a long-time veterans advocate who was instrumental in shaping the report, reminded the teleconference participants that “one of the hallmark symptoms of PTSD is the tendency to self-medicate.”
Gambill is a veteran of Nuclear Duty forces in Europe and of Reagan’s South American military ventures. He makes no secret of the fact that he has done time in jail and under bridges, kicked a serious drug habit, and managed to live with the mental health issues that are a result of his service.
For the last decade, his first-hand experiences have fed his efforts to promote the diversion of veterans from incarceration into treatment, and he is convinced that finding ways to deal with addictions is a key part of that effort.
“We are not going to let murderers off the hook, or sex offenders. We’re not going to let people who have 16 aggravated DUIs and killed somebody off the hook. Those guys aren’t getting out of jail any time soon.
“So who do we have room to help? People with drug offense charges. In cases where a veteran has combat-related psychological trauma and non-violent drug offenses, there is a lot of political will to give these guys a break.”
A great litmus test for that political will would be the immediate repeal of the 2002 VA directive barring treatment for incarcerated veterans. This almost incomprehensibly myopic policy is, as the report states, “a missed opportunity for the VA to provide critical services and support for veterans to recover from the psychological wounds that caused their criminal activity in the first place.”
Currently, the most successful mechanism for diverting veterans from incarceration and into treatment was conceived by Judge Robert Russell. His veterans’ court in Buffalo, NY, is a hybrid version of the drug and mental health courts that since the 80s have had a dramatic impact on the conversation about who and under what circumstances should be sent to prison.
Russell’s court was the first in the country to cater specifically to the needs of veterans with addiction disorders and/or mental illness who are charged with nonviolent criminal offenses. After almost two years, Russell’s court boasts an astonishing recidivism rate of zero, compared to the 60 to 70 percent nation average.
Such courts are now springing up across the country, but they are seriously limited by their ability to attract and process large numbers of cases. Last year, Judge Russell’s court processed under a hundred cases.
“And they’re not getting any current conflict vets,” Gambill told me in a phone interview. “It’s a lot of Vietnam vets, and it’s great that they are getting help, but the intent of all this is not to have another generation go through the same bullshit. It doesn’t mean anything if we don’t get some significant numbers of veterans to participate in the program.”
One serious problem, he explains, is that the specialty courts, drug, mental health and veterans’, are voluntary. “Consider a 23 year-old who gets arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct on a Friday night. The cops throw him in jail, but before he is arraigned on Monday morning, the public defender offers him the choice of a $600 fine, $500 suspended, pay $100 down. 90 days, 87 days suspended--time served 3 days, and you walk out today.
Or of matriculating into the veterans’ court for a year or so of court-supervised treatment, at the end of which time the charges against him will be thrown out.
“Which one do you think a 23 year-old guy on a roll is going to choose?
“That’s what is happening all over the country,” Gambill explains, “That’s why the numbers are so low and why the specialty courts cannot be expected to solve the whole problem.”
Furthermore, “the whole problem,” as Tom Tarantino, a legislative associate with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), pointed out, is of an entirely unknown magnitude.
“We don’t really know how many veterans are in jail right now. The numbers cited in the DPA report are from a survey done in 2004. In 2004, there were over a million fewer veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan than there are today.”
Tarantino offered a simple solution to the absence of that information: “The Department of Defense has lists of people who have been in the military and the Department of Justice quarterly collects lists of people who have been arrested. We just need them to compare lists.”
But even armed with that data, there are, all told, only about a dozen veterans’ courts in operation or in the planning stages in the entire country. Even if more soldiers and veterans can be persuaded to make use of them, there are hardly enough courts to handle the daunting wave of new veterans who are expected to run afoul of the law.
The DPA report is, however, more interested in interventions that can occur before veterans become entangled in the criminal justice system. Presently, most prison diversion programs, including many, if not all, of the emerging veterans’ treatment courts, require veterans to plead guilty to criminal charges before being directed to treatment.
The consequences of an arrest and conviction can be devastating, the report explains, including denial of employment, housing or public benefits. And an estimated 585,000 veterans are denied the right to vote because of their felony convictions.
And even when all charges are finally dismissed, electronic information that has been released, cannot always be recovered. Data harvesting has become a big business, and any arrest, regardless of outcome, can resurface to compromise a veteran’s future.
So the report emphasizes “front-end diversion practices,” or ways keep veterans out of prison in the first place. Gambill describes some encouraging experimental programs in Chicago and Los Angeles that make use of veterans who are specifically trained to ride along with police when they get disturbance calls.
These “peer intervention specialists” can recognize another vet by his bearing and behavior. Speaking a common language and referencing a common culture, these intervention specialists are far more likely to convince a freaked-out vet to back down, and then talk him into accepting a treatment option.
Some of the suggestions made in this report will require the coordinated efforts and funds of multiple agencies. But some are so simple and obvious, even cheap, that it is sort of mind boggling that they even warrant discussion.
For, example, Dr. Bob Newman, MD, Director, Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, wants to know how TRICARE, the Defense Department’s health insurance plan for active duty soldiers, can justify its refusal not to pay for methadone and other medication therapies for addicted veterans.
“I want to stress,” Newman said on the teleconference, “that we are not talking about some hypothetical, new Idea as to how to approach the problem of opiate addiction. It is endorsed by the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the World Health Organization, and the Institute of Medicine.
“And our Department of Defense has an insurance plan that simply excludes maintenance treatment. No explanation. It just says, we don’t pay for it. And I understand that could be changed with the stroke of a pen.”
So simple, and yet like many of the recommendations in this report, so stubbornly resistant to change. One must wonder why?
Untreated combat-related mental health injuries are predictive of substance abuse, and untreated substance abuse is predictive of encounters with the criminal justice system. And the door predictably revolves.
Tarantino wants it made very clear that, for many soldiers, the vicious cycle begins while they are still under military jurisdiction. “It was really alarming how many combat soldiers were given prescription drugs with little or no supervision,” he reported. “To be really blunt, I know crack dealers who are more discriminating with issuing drugs than some of the clinics that I saw in Iraq.”
Many of those drugs have serious known side effects, including suicide. And many of them, drugs to help soldiers sleep and drugs to help them stay awake, are seriously addictive.
“The ease of obtaining prescription drugs in the combat zone,” Tarantino explains, “is not mirrored back in garrison. When soldiers come home, their reliance on those same drugs can create severe problems.”
This report highlights the gross injustice of holding soldiers and veterans entirely responsible for drug reliance that is facilitated, if not encouraged, when it serves military purposes. That injustice is aggravated when it is used as an excuse to kick soldiers out of the military thereby denying them benefits. It is further aggravated when treatment is withheld, both for their injuries and for their addictions, and aggravated further still when it is punished with incarceration.
One must wonder whose interests then are being served?
General Xenakis promises that “our leadership heartily endorses” what this report is hoping to accomplish. They should. Its recommendations are an important step in the right direction.
But they should be held to that promise.
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143867/
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
Posted on November 11, 2009
A new report by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) exposes practices and policies that for decades have unjustly resulted in large numbers of psychically injured and addicted veterans landing in the nation’s prisons and jails.
The report reflects a year’s worth of outreach to veterans and veterans’ advocates across the country, and a distillation of their most creative, innovative and optimistic responses to the problem.
Gen. Steven Xenakis, MD, Special Advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Warrior and Family Support, brought a message of official support to a teleconference announcing the release of the report:
“250,000 soldiers is a large number of Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen who have been affected,” he said. “It is so important that people are made aware of the issues, and that we follow up with the best action plans we can find … We in this country have a responsibility to assist and support them.”
Specifically, the report recommends changes in state and federal statutes that now prioritize punishment over treatment for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses as a result of their addiction and other mental health issues.
“Courts, as a way of dealing with large numbers of people with substance abuse problems, are a very slow and expensive way to go,” explained Dan Abrahamson, the Drug Policy Alliance’s Director of Legal Affairs. “You need a courtroom and a judge, and all the players from prosecutors to defense attorneys. Providing treatment straight up requires far fewer resources and far less investment for far greater returns.”
The report also calls for the adoption of overdose prevention programs, and the expansion of veterans’ access to medication-assisted therapies to treat opioid dependence.
Overdose is an on-going problem among veterans, as are other self-destructive behaviors that inflate the official and unofficial tally of suicides among active duty troops and veterans. (Veterans, often compromised by alcohol or drugs, are an astonishing 148 percent more likely to die in a motorcycle crash than civilians of comparable age, race, and sex.)
Guy Gambill, a long-time veterans advocate who was instrumental in shaping the report, reminded the teleconference participants that “one of the hallmark symptoms of PTSD is the tendency to self-medicate.”
“In the aftermath of Vietnam, self-medication and its collateral behaviors landed tens of thousands of veterans in prison. This time,” Gambill suggests, “let’s be smarter than the problem.”
Gambill is a veteran of Nuclear Duty forces in Europe and of Reagan’s South American military ventures. He makes no secret of the fact that he has done time in jail and under bridges, kicked a serious drug habit, and managed to live with the mental health issues that are a result of his service.
For the last decade, his first-hand experiences have fed his efforts to promote the diversion of veterans from incarceration into treatment, and he is convinced that finding ways to deal with addictions is a key part of that effort.
“We are not going to let murderers off the hook, or sex offenders. We’re not going to let people who have 16 aggravated DUIs and killed somebody off the hook. Those guys aren’t getting out of jail any time soon.
“So who do we have room to help? People with drug offense charges. In cases where a veteran has combat-related psychological trauma and non-violent drug offenses, there is a lot of political will to give these guys a break.”
A great litmus test for that political will would be the immediate repeal of the 2002 VA directive barring treatment for incarcerated veterans. This almost incomprehensibly myopic policy is, as the report states, “a missed opportunity for the VA to provide critical services and support for veterans to recover from the psychological wounds that caused their criminal activity in the first place.”
Currently, the most successful mechanism for diverting veterans from incarceration and into treatment was conceived by Judge Robert Russell. His veterans’ court in Buffalo, NY, is a hybrid version of the drug and mental health courts that since the 80s have had a dramatic impact on the conversation about who and under what circumstances should be sent to prison.
Russell’s court was the first in the country to cater specifically to the needs of veterans with addiction disorders and/or mental illness who are charged with nonviolent criminal offenses. After almost two years, Russell’s court boasts an astonishing recidivism rate of zero, compared to the 60 to 70 percent nation average.
Such courts are now springing up across the country, but they are seriously limited by their ability to attract and process large numbers of cases. Last year, Judge Russell’s court processed under a hundred cases.
“And they’re not getting any current conflict vets,” Gambill told me in a phone interview. “It’s a lot of Vietnam vets, and it’s great that they are getting help, but the intent of all this is not to have another generation go through the same bullshit. It doesn’t mean anything if we don’t get some significant numbers of veterans to participate in the program.”
One serious problem, he explains, is that the specialty courts, drug, mental health and veterans’, are voluntary. “Consider a 23 year-old who gets arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct on a Friday night. The cops throw him in jail, but before he is arraigned on Monday morning, the public defender offers him the choice of a $600 fine, $500 suspended, pay $100 down. 90 days, 87 days suspended--time served 3 days, and you walk out today.
Or of matriculating into the veterans’ court for a year or so of court-supervised treatment, at the end of which time the charges against him will be thrown out.
“Which one do you think a 23 year-old guy on a roll is going to choose?
“That’s what is happening all over the country,” Gambill explains, “That’s why the numbers are so low and why the specialty courts cannot be expected to solve the whole problem.”
Furthermore, “the whole problem,” as Tom Tarantino, a legislative associate with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), pointed out, is of an entirely unknown magnitude.
“We don’t really know how many veterans are in jail right now. The numbers cited in the DPA report are from a survey done in 2004. In 2004, there were over a million fewer veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan than there are today.”
Tarantino offered a simple solution to the absence of that information: “The Department of Defense has lists of people who have been in the military and the Department of Justice quarterly collects lists of people who have been arrested. We just need them to compare lists.”
But even armed with that data, there are, all told, only about a dozen veterans’ courts in operation or in the planning stages in the entire country. Even if more soldiers and veterans can be persuaded to make use of them, there are hardly enough courts to handle the daunting wave of new veterans who are expected to run afoul of the law.
The DPA report is, however, more interested in interventions that can occur before veterans become entangled in the criminal justice system. Presently, most prison diversion programs, including many, if not all, of the emerging veterans’ treatment courts, require veterans to plead guilty to criminal charges before being directed to treatment.
The consequences of an arrest and conviction can be devastating, the report explains, including denial of employment, housing or public benefits. And an estimated 585,000 veterans are denied the right to vote because of their felony convictions.
And even when all charges are finally dismissed, electronic information that has been released, cannot always be recovered. Data harvesting has become a big business, and any arrest, regardless of outcome, can resurface to compromise a veteran’s future.
So the report emphasizes “front-end diversion practices,” or ways keep veterans out of prison in the first place. Gambill describes some encouraging experimental programs in Chicago and Los Angeles that make use of veterans who are specifically trained to ride along with police when they get disturbance calls.
These “peer intervention specialists” can recognize another vet by his bearing and behavior. Speaking a common language and referencing a common culture, these intervention specialists are far more likely to convince a freaked-out vet to back down, and then talk him into accepting a treatment option.
Some of the suggestions made in this report will require the coordinated efforts and funds of multiple agencies. But some are so simple and obvious, even cheap, that it is sort of mind boggling that they even warrant discussion.
For, example, Dr. Bob Newman, MD, Director, Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, wants to know how TRICARE, the Defense Department’s health insurance plan for active duty soldiers, can justify its refusal not to pay for methadone and other medication therapies for addicted veterans.
“I want to stress,” Newman said on the teleconference, “that we are not talking about some hypothetical, new Idea as to how to approach the problem of opiate addiction. It is endorsed by the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the World Health Organization, and the Institute of Medicine.
“And our Department of Defense has an insurance plan that simply excludes maintenance treatment. No explanation. It just says, we don’t pay for it. And I understand that could be changed with the stroke of a pen.”
So simple, and yet like many of the recommendations in this report, so stubbornly resistant to change. One must wonder why?
Untreated combat-related mental health injuries are predictive of substance abuse, and untreated substance abuse is predictive of encounters with the criminal justice system. And the door predictably revolves.
Tarantino wants it made very clear that, for many soldiers, the vicious cycle begins while they are still under military jurisdiction. “It was really alarming how many combat soldiers were given prescription drugs with little or no supervision,” he reported. “To be really blunt, I know crack dealers who are more discriminating with issuing drugs than some of the clinics that I saw in Iraq.”
Many of those drugs have serious known side effects, including suicide. And many of them, drugs to help soldiers sleep and drugs to help them stay awake, are seriously addictive.
“The ease of obtaining prescription drugs in the combat zone,” Tarantino explains, “is not mirrored back in garrison. When soldiers come home, their reliance on those same drugs can create severe problems.”
This report highlights the gross injustice of holding soldiers and veterans entirely responsible for drug reliance that is facilitated, if not encouraged, when it serves military purposes. That injustice is aggravated when it is used as an excuse to kick soldiers out of the military thereby denying them benefits. It is further aggravated when treatment is withheld, both for their injuries and for their addictions, and aggravated further still when it is punished with incarceration.
One must wonder whose interests then are being served?
General Xenakis promises that “our leadership heartily endorses” what this report is hoping to accomplish. They should. Its recommendations are an important step in the right direction.
But they should be held to that promise.
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143867/
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Rep Joe Sestak Remembers Incarcerated Vets
Sestak aims to help imprisoned vets
Tuesday, November 10, 2009By TIMOTHY LOGUE
tlogue@delcotimes.com
Looking to combat growing problems of homelessness, substance abuse and crime among veterans, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak is trying to make sure incarcerated vets with service-related injuries and impairments receive proper medical treatment while behind bars.
The congressman wants Veterans Administration doctors to communicate and share records with physicians at local, state and federal prisons who are charged with the care of veterans who were disabled as a result of their military service.
“I am not defending criminal behavior of any kind,” Sestak, D-7, of Edgmont, said in an open letter to Gen. Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs. “I do believe that those who volunteer to defend our nation and become disabled in our service, particularly with PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury) need to be provided with the care appropriate to their injuries. At present, we have a seam in the administration of care for those veterans should they be incarcerated.”
Sestak said many incarcerated vets are receiving improper medical treatment that makes them more likely to reoffend upon release.
“PTSD is the signature issue of this war,” said Sestak, a retired Navy admiral. “Many of our young men and women are coming home, not getting the care they need, and then seeking comfort in drugs and alcohol. Once they become hooked, they are committing crimes to support their habit. It’s a trail we want to stop.”
Sestak met with members of Shinseki’s staff about his proposal last week and said the response was positive.
“The general has already stated his goal of eradicating homelessness among veterans in the next five years and I think what we’re trying to accomplish goes hand in hand,” he said.
Vietnam veteran Thomas Clay of Media, who spent 21 months in the hospital recovering from machine gun wounds he suffered during the Tet Offensive in 1968, said Sestak’s proposal makes sense.
“As long as you have the person’s consent, I think those records should follow them wherever they go,” Clay said. “A lot of people who returned from Vietnam in the late ’60s and early ’70s came back with drug problems and medical problems that went untreated.”
Clay said advances in body armor are saving the lives of soldiers and Marines who would have been killed in previous wars. The trade-off for those that survive, however, is often some type of brain injury.
“People don’t realize the long-term effects of concussions,” he said. “These are injuries that can last for months and months and never really heal.”
Sestak said he also supports special courts for wayward veterans who commit nonviolent crimes.
“I think it can be combined with the mental health court,” he said. “We know that 20 percent of our active force and 32 percent of our National Guard force are coming home with PTSD,” he said. “It makes sense that we have a (system) in place that takes into account what they have been through.”
Joseph Rogers, president of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said a veterans court could cut down on recidivism and save money.
“Different communities have been using mental health courts for some time,” he said. “Most of the crimes are nonviolent and the largest percentage of cases are drug-related. With the high cost of incarceration, if you can divert these people effectively and show the diversion works, it can be an useful alternative.”
Sestak said 46 percent of veterans in federal prison and 15 percent of veterans in state prison are incarcerated for drug violations.
Of that population, 61 percent meet the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for substance dependence or abuse.
“Simply stated, we must do more to help ensure that those who specialize in treating service-related illnesses can help rehabilitate our veterans who suffer from these illnesses before they are incarcerated,” Sestak said.
The congressman wants Veterans Administration doctors to communicate and share records with physicians at local, state and federal prisons who are charged with the care of veterans who were disabled as a result of their military service.
“I am not defending criminal behavior of any kind,” Sestak, D-7, of Edgmont, said in an open letter to Gen. Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs. “I do believe that those who volunteer to defend our nation and become disabled in our service, particularly with PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury) need to be provided with the care appropriate to their injuries. At present, we have a seam in the administration of care for those veterans should they be incarcerated.”
Sestak said many incarcerated vets are receiving improper medical treatment that makes them more likely to reoffend upon release.
“PTSD is the signature issue of this war,” said Sestak, a retired Navy admiral. “Many of our young men and women are coming home, not getting the care they need, and then seeking comfort in drugs and alcohol. Once they become hooked, they are committing crimes to support their habit. It’s a trail we want to stop.”
Sestak met with members of Shinseki’s staff about his proposal last week and said the response was positive.
“The general has already stated his goal of eradicating homelessness among veterans in the next five years and I think what we’re trying to accomplish goes hand in hand,” he said.
Vietnam veteran Thomas Clay of Media, who spent 21 months in the hospital recovering from machine gun wounds he suffered during the Tet Offensive in 1968, said Sestak’s proposal makes sense.
“As long as you have the person’s consent, I think those records should follow them wherever they go,” Clay said. “A lot of people who returned from Vietnam in the late ’60s and early ’70s came back with drug problems and medical problems that went untreated.”
Clay said advances in body armor are saving the lives of soldiers and Marines who would have been killed in previous wars. The trade-off for those that survive, however, is often some type of brain injury.
“People don’t realize the long-term effects of concussions,” he said. “These are injuries that can last for months and months and never really heal.”
Sestak said he also supports special courts for wayward veterans who commit nonviolent crimes.
“I think it can be combined with the mental health court,” he said. “We know that 20 percent of our active force and 32 percent of our National Guard force are coming home with PTSD,” he said. “It makes sense that we have a (system) in place that takes into account what they have been through.”
Joseph Rogers, president of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said a veterans court could cut down on recidivism and save money.
“Different communities have been using mental health courts for some time,” he said. “Most of the crimes are nonviolent and the largest percentage of cases are drug-related. With the high cost of incarceration, if you can divert these people effectively and show the diversion works, it can be an useful alternative.”
Sestak said 46 percent of veterans in federal prison and 15 percent of veterans in state prison are incarcerated for drug violations.
Of that population, 61 percent meet the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for substance dependence or abuse.
“Simply stated, we must do more to help ensure that those who specialize in treating service-related illnesses can help rehabilitate our veterans who suffer from these illnesses before they are incarcerated,” Sestak said.
URL: http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/11/10/news/doc4af8f02706afb751180934.prt
Harry Mitchell and Incarcerated Veterans
Below is the Veterans' Day "Mitchell Report". Didn't know Harry was on all these veterans' affairs committees.
He's another person we should be talking to about incarcerated veterans, since they make up about 9% of the US prison population. How long have we been sending the same people off to war? Entering nine years, now. Drugs a problem among soldiers and vets? Surprise, surprise.
C'mon, Harry. This is all fine and dandy - and maybe I missed something - but at least give our brothers and sisters inside a salute for their service, too. We shouldn't have to dig that deep to find a place in our hearts for them, nor should you.
We'll be in touch soon.
(That's a cue to AZ voters to call his office this week - if you're reading this blog, live in AZ and don't meet the Governor's car with me tomorrow, then you owe our imprisoned veterans a call to Harry, at least. The Democrats do have Congress, and he's got something to do with all this.)
-------------
The Mitchell Report.
He's another person we should be talking to about incarcerated veterans, since they make up about 9% of the US prison population. How long have we been sending the same people off to war? Entering nine years, now. Drugs a problem among soldiers and vets? Surprise, surprise.
C'mon, Harry. This is all fine and dandy - and maybe I missed something - but at least give our brothers and sisters inside a salute for their service, too. We shouldn't have to dig that deep to find a place in our hearts for them, nor should you.
We'll be in touch soon.
(That's a cue to AZ voters to call his office this week - if you're reading this blog, live in AZ and don't meet the Governor's car with me tomorrow, then you owe our imprisoned veterans a call to Harry, at least. The Democrats do have Congress, and he's got something to do with all this.)
-------------
The Mitchell Report.
| Tuesday, 10 November 2009 17:12 |
Veterans Day Update U.S Congressman Harry Mitchell is Chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and represents more than 65,000 veterans. Mitchell understands the importance of providing our veterans with the benefits they deserve."The men and women of the armed forces have been made a promise that if they defend our country in military service, we will provide them with the benefits they have earned." -Congressman Harry Mitchell Below is an update on the work Congressman Mitchell is doing on the behalf of veterans in Arizona and across the nation:President Obama Thanks Congressman Mitchell for Leadership on Veterans Issues August 17, 2009 "We will fulfill our responsibility to our veterans as they return to civilian life. I was proud to co-sponsor the Post-9/11 GI Bill as a senator. Thanks to VFW members across the country-and leaders like Arizona's Harry Mitchell in Congress-it's now the law of the land. And as President, I'm committed to seeing that it is successfully implemented." -President Barack Obama, Remarks to National VFW Convention, Phoenix, Arizona, August 3, 2009 President Barack Obama today gave a shoutout to Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., for his work on the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill, which went into effect Saturday. Obama was speaking at a G.I. Bill event at George Mason University in the Washington, DC, suburb of Fairfax, Va. Obama mentioned Mitchell as one of the original bill sponsors who couldn't attend the event. "All of them worked hard along with the delegation that is present, so we are very grateful to all of them," Obama said. -Arizona Republic Mitchell Earns American Legion ‘Distinguished Legislator' Award The American Legion Department of Arizona presented Mitchell with its Distinguished Legislator Award for his work on behalf of our nation's veterans. Mitchell accepted the award in Glendale on Saturday, June 18 2009 and addressed the organization at its annual convention. "I am honored to be recognized by the American Legion and proud of the work we have done on behalf of veterans in Arizona and across the nation. Our veterans have stood for us and it is our duty to stand for them." Mitchell said. Veterans Funding Update This year's veteran's budget has increased the investment in veterans' health care and services by 60 percent since January 2007, including the largest single increase in the 78-year history of the VA. This funding has strengthened health care for more than 5 million veterans, resulting in the addition of 17,000 new doctors and nurses, and more Community-Based Outpatient Clinics and new Vet Centers. It has been critical to meeting the needs of the 363,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan in need of care over the last three years. This funding also is expanding mental health screening and treatment -- vital to the many veterans suffering from PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury. Congress has recently enacted a law that paves the way for ensuring sufficient, timely and predictable funding for veterans' health care, a key priority of many veterans' groups. This law authorizes Congress to approve VA medical care appropriations one year in advance of the start of each fiscal year. In 2007, Congress enacted the Wounded Warriors Assistance Act, which addressed the problems and gaps in care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military health care facilities. VA and the Defense Department are implementing electronic health records to give service members a single, accurate, paperless health record to smooth the transition from the Armed Forces to the VA system. Rep. Mitchell Helps Secure Passage of Major Veterans Legislation On Thursday, October 22, 2009, President Obama signed into law H.R. 1016, which Congressman proudly cosponsored. The new law authorizes Congress to approve Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical care appropriations one year in advance of the start of each fiscal year. An advance appropriation provides VA with up to one year in which to plan how to deliver the most efficient and effective care to an increasing number of veterans with increasingly complex medical conditions. Congressman Mitchell supported this bill which, along with stabilizing out nations housing industry, ensures our honorable service men and women can take full advantage of the first-time homebuyer tax credit. Current law requires first-time homebuyers who use the $8,000 tax credit to repay the credit if they move from their principal residence within three years of closing. The Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009, if enacted, would exclude service members from the repayment of the tax credit if their orders require travel. The bill passed by a vote of 416-0, and is now pending before Senate. The Service Members Spouses Residency Relief Act allows service members to maintain their residency for certain purposes - such as voting, income taxes, and personal property taxes - in a state from which they are absent in compliance with military orders. The House approved this measure on November 2. 2009 and it is now pending before the Senate. This bill authorizes the Labor Department to pay a monthly training assistance allowance of upwards of $1,400 for each month, up to 6 months every 10 years, which a veteran is enrolled in an employment-training program that teaches a skill in demand. It also provides a moving stipend of up to $5,000 for moving expenses directly related to training. The bill passed by a vote of 356-0 and it is now pending before the Senate. The FY 2010 VA Appropriations bill contained the largest veterans funding increase ever requested by a President. The House approved a bill that provides a path to restoring and revitalizing the services provided to veterans by adding $14.5 billion above fiscal year 2009. In addition to appropriations for fiscal year 2010, it includes advance appropriations for 2011. Congress has provided $17.7 billion over the last two years, and once enacted, H.R. 3082 will amount to a 58% increase since 2007. The bill passed by a vote of 415-3, and is now pending before Senate. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was honored our veterans by provided a $1.4 billion increase for the Department of Veterans Affairs for maintenance at VA medical facilities, construction of veterans' extended care facilities, and veteran cemetery repairs. It provided an economic stimulus payment of $250 to disabled veterans receiving VA compensation or pension. The bill passed the House and was signed into law by the President in February. Keeping the Promises Made to Veterans Electronic Medical Records: The House Veterans Affairs Committee is continuing to monitor the progress being made to ensure an interoperable electronic health record system between the DOD and the VA. President Obama ordered the agencies to work together to define and build a Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic record that will ultimately contain administrative and medical information from the day an individual enters military service throughout their military career, and into the veteran phase of life. New Diseases Associated with Agent Orange: An independent study by the Institute of Medicine indicates an association with several diseases linked to exposure to Agent Orange. VA Secretary Shinseki has announced that Vietnam Veterans with B cell leukemia's, such as hairy cell leukemia; Parkinson's disease; and ischemic heart disease with these diseases may be eligible for disability compensation and health care benefits. Ensuring Veterans receive their GI Bill Benefits: The G.I Bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell in the House of Representatives and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) in the Senate to provide veterans with enhanced new education benefits beginning this fall. On August 1, 2009, veterans started receiving college education benefits under the new Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. When news broke about delays of GI Bill benefits for veterans, Mitchell demanded accountability from the Department of Veterans Affairs at a Congressional hearing, as well as a plan to ensure veterans receive their benefits in a timely manner. No veteran should have their education delayed. Not by one semester. Advance payments on late claims are being issued by U. S. Treasury within 3 workdays following submission of this request. For further information call 1-888-GI-BILL-1 (1-888-442-4551) to speak with a Veterans Benefits Counselor. You can also visit the VA's GI Bill website. DOD Announces Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay The Defense Department announced plans to provide Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay to service members who had their enlistment extended or retirement suspended due to Stop Loss between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 30, 2009. Eligible personnel will receive a payment of $500 per month for each month that the member was retained on active duty due to Stop Loss. For additional information: Army: https://www.stoplosspay.army.mil Navy: send email to - NXAG_N132C@navy.milNXAG_N132C@navy.mil Marine Corps: https://www.manpower.usmc.mil/stoploss Air Force: http://www.afpc.randolph.af.mil/stoploss VA Oversight: Solutions and Accountability for Veterans Mitchell's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations provides oversight on programs and operations of the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as those of other federal agencies that pertain to veterans. In carrying out its responsibilities, the Subcommittee conducts hearings, site visits, and investigations nationwide. Chairman Mitchell has held a series of oversight hearings to measure program results, end waste, and provide accountability for the American taxpayer. Recent Oversight and Investigations Hearings: Oversight Hearing - "Senior Executive Service Bonuses and Other Administrative Issues at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs" Oversight Hearing - "The Implications of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Limited Scope of Gulf War Illness Research" |
Combat Veterans: From The Batlefield to Prison
This is more current, and looks more comprehensive. The article is long and the website is worth visiting, so I'm sending you there for the whole thing. This is part of what looks like a very interesting series on veterans and criminal justice:
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From the Battlefield to Prison
Crime Report Blog
by Cara Tabachnick
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 6:34 am
In a series of articles to mark Veterans Day, the Crime Report examines the impact of returning soldiers on the U.S. justice system. In Part 1, we explore the special tragedy of troubled veterans in prison.
Most of the returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never get in trouble with the law—but the outlook is bleak for those who do. The U.S. justice system is poorly prepared to cope with young ex-military personnel whose post-combat stress or inability to adjust to civilian society pushes them over the line into criminal activity, a special report by The Crime Report shows.
Although the number of incarcerated veterans has not risen dramatically, a Bureau of Justice Statistics report planned for release next year is expected to show that for the first time since the Vietnam War, the majority of veterans now serving prison terms are between the ages of 25 and 34. With no early end of America’s overseas military commitments in sight, U.S. authorities need to devote more attention to the needs of troubled soldiers, says Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of Veterans for Common Sense, a national advocacy group based in Washington D.C..
Improving and expanding treatment and prison counseling programs for needy veterans can “make a tremendous difference” if corrections officials made this a top priority, Sullivan adds “It can save untold lives and billions of dollars.”...
(finish the story at The Crime Report Blog)
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From the Battlefield to Prison
Crime Report Blog
by Cara Tabachnick
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 6:34 am
In a series of articles to mark Veterans Day, the Crime Report examines the impact of returning soldiers on the U.S. justice system. In Part 1, we explore the special tragedy of troubled veterans in prison.
Most of the returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never get in trouble with the law—but the outlook is bleak for those who do. The U.S. justice system is poorly prepared to cope with young ex-military personnel whose post-combat stress or inability to adjust to civilian society pushes them over the line into criminal activity, a special report by The Crime Report shows.
Although the number of incarcerated veterans has not risen dramatically, a Bureau of Justice Statistics report planned for release next year is expected to show that for the first time since the Vietnam War, the majority of veterans now serving prison terms are between the ages of 25 and 34. With no early end of America’s overseas military commitments in sight, U.S. authorities need to devote more attention to the needs of troubled soldiers, says Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of Veterans for Common Sense, a national advocacy group based in Washington D.C..
Improving and expanding treatment and prison counseling programs for needy veterans can “make a tremendous difference” if corrections officials made this a top priority, Sullivan adds “It can save untold lives and billions of dollars.”...
(finish the story at The Crime Report Blog)
Veterans' Drug Courts
The county’s drug court – one of the nation’s first, in 1994 – operates on the premise that treating addicts instead of merely jailing them works better for everyone. Substance-abusers accused of drug- or alcohol-connected crimes – small-time trafficking, theft, drunk driving, for example – must voluntarily opt in. They waive their right to a trial and accept the maximum sentence for their offense.
The sentence is then suspended on condition they follow a strict regimen designed to break their addiction: treatment, participation in group meetings, random urine tests, avoidance of any criminal activity. The Pierce County Alliance runs the treatment side of things.
If they fail, they get the book thrown at them. If they succeed, the charge is dismissed. Studies have shown the program to be much more effective than jail in preventing relapses and further crimes, and saving the taxpayers’ money.
The veterans’ drug court, announced last week, is being launched with the help of a three-year, $900,000 grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. The new program will be able to tap into the treatment and health resources of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
When it opens early next year, it will operate in precisely the same way as existing drug court – but with an additional focus on problems that may have arisen from military service. One RAND study found that 25 to 30 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report symptoms of psychological disorder, mild or severe.
Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression are all too common among troops who’ve seen combat.
Only a fraction of veterans wind up abusing alcohol or drugs, but it’s a fraction that deserves special attention.
These are people who have put their bodies between America and its enemies.
Judge Gary Steiner, who presides over the existing drug court, is a Vietnam veteran himself and an excellent choice to lead this expansion. “If you’ve been there,” he says, “you have some kind of idea what they’ve gone through.”
Roughly 4,400 veterans were booked into the Pierce County jail last year, many presumably for crimes fueled by alcoholism or drug addiction. Freeing some of them from the tangle of crime and substance abuse could take an expensive burden off the criminal justice system.
Veterans drug court is almost brand new: It’s been pioneered in Rochester and Buffalo, N.Y., over the last three years, and Pierce County is one of the first jurisdictions in the nation to get federal funding to expand the program.
With the estimated 95,000 veterans who live the county, this is an ideal place for the expansion to begin.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Justice, Drug Treatment, and US Veterans
Report: Vets need drug treatment, not jail
Navy TimesTreatment, not incarceration, should be the first option for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses, a group advocating alternatives to the nation’s “war on drugs” said Wednesday in a new report.
The Drug Policy Alliance report also called on government agencies to adopt overdose prevention programs and policies for vets who misuse substances or take prescription medicines, and urged “significantly expanded” access to medication-assisted therapies, such as methadone and buprenorphine, for the treatment of dependence on opioid drugs used to treat pain and mood disorders.
During a conference call with a Drug Policy Alliance representative and seven other advocates for change in the treatment of veterans, the military’s Tricare health benefits program came under fire for what a New York-based physician and specialist in drug addiction treatment called its failure to pay for veterans’ and family members’ opioid dependence treatments.
The treatments, said Robert Newman of the Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute, are endorsed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Institute of Medicine.
Newman cited a 2008 speech by U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak in Hanoi, in which he acknowledged that U.S. dollars were being spent on methadone treatment for Vietnamese drug addicts.
“And yet, our government, our Department of Defense, has an insurance plan that simply excludes maintenance treatment,” Newman said. “I find that outrageous.”
According to the Tricare manual, “drug maintenance programs when one addictive drug is substituted for another on a maintenance basis [such as methadone substituted for heroin] are not covered.” Tricare spokesman Austin Camacho said this applies to all Tricare beneficiaries, including veterans and family members.
There are no solid numbers on how many veterans suffer from drug addiction — just as there are none that nail down the number of veterans currently in prison and county jails.
The Drug Policy Alliance says that substance abuse is the “single greatest predictive factor for the incarceration of veterans” and that without more effective treatment programs, veteran incarceration is likely to increase.
“The bottom line is, we don’t have accurate numbers,” said Dan Abrahamson, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance and the report’s co-author. “The data that we do have are outdated. Veterans are actually just getting lost as they come back home. They’re lost in the data sets, they’re lost in the reporting, they’re lost when agencies don’t ask them whether they’re veterans.”
Those close to the issue point out that about 30 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression or other mental illness or cognitive disability, and that 19 percent of veterans who have received care from the Veterans Affairs Department have been diagnosed with substance abuse or dependence.
Guy Gambill, an Army veteran and advocate for veterans’ rights who took part in the conference call, noted that one of the hallmarks of PTSD “is a tendency to self-medicate. People do that with drugs, people do that with alcohol.”
USA Today reported in June that the rate of Army soldiers diagnosed with alcoholism or alcohol abuse increased from 6.1 per thousand in 2003 to an estimated 11.4 as of March.
The Pentagon says that from Sept. 11, 2001, through August 2009, some 1,991,578 individual service members have been deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. It does not track how many of those served in the actual combat zones.
Gambill called for a dialogue between veterans service organizations, justice reform groups and the military to “formulate policy based on research” in an effort to avoid the widespread problems with drugs and incarceration experienced by many Vietnam-era veterans.
“If I could do anything here, it would be to exhort Congress to have the political courage to be smarter than the problem this time,” he said.
Veterans' Project: NYC
Useful, current information about veterans in the CJ system in New York.
Only 1% of our population serves in the armed forces, I believe. Yet veterans make up 9% or prisoners in America. I don't think the young men and women who enlist are necessarily more prone to commit crimes than the rest of us. I think this speaks to how trauma and violence can affect people, how complex the overlap between mental health and substance abuse problems are, and how readily we exploit our labor in this country - including soldiers - and toss them aside when they lose their market value.
As I look through these articles on veterans and criminal justice, I see both explicit and implied the presumption that military service in and of itself - not one's conduct, character, or the actual crime - is what entitles vets to a "break" in the justice system. Lots of people should get a break.
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There are about 70,000 veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in New York State , many struggling with the transition back to civilian life as Vietnam
A new pilot program called the Veterans Project, announced on Tuesday and set to begin in Queens, Brooklyn and Nassau County, aims to help keep them out of prison.
“If a veteran finds themselves in the criminal justice system, they deserve a helping hand,” Jonathan Lippman, chief judge of the State Court of Appeals, said at a news conference to announce the project at the Veterans Affairs Hospital on East 23rd Street.
The project — a collaboration between county prosecutors, the Department of Veterans Affairs and health care providers — will try to divert veterans who commit nonviolent crimes away from prison while helping them with underlying issues like homelessness or substance abuse.
Bruce Burnham, 63, aVietnam
“I had a cousin that ended up serving time,” Mr. Burnham said, adding that many of his former comrades got into trouble when they returned home. “Now this is a positive step forward,” he said.
As part of the project, defendants with military service will be identified as they soon as enter the justice system. They will be helped to get treatment and support services to address problems that many of them face, like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Those who complete the program may have their charges dismissed or reduced, or win a reduction in their sentences.
According to the Center for Mental Health Services National Gains Center, veterans account for 9 out of every 100 prisoners inUnited States
Prosecutors say many veterans get into legal trouble when they use alcohol or drugs to try to cope with traumatic memories. Sometimes the charge is drug possession or theft, but the underlying problem can often be addiction.
Last year a RAND Corporation study said that nearly 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans — 300,000 in all — reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, but that only slightly more than half seek treatment.
On Tuesday, Charles J. Hynes, theBrooklyn district attorney, said that the project “recognizes the heroic services of members of our armed forces.” He added, “We cannot permit our country to ignore the lesson learned after Vietnam
While the project received wide support, some legal advocates said that its scope is too limited.
JoAnne Page, the chief executive officer of the Fortune Society, which promotes prisoners’ re-entry into society, said that the move to keep defendants from prison should not be limited to veterans who have been arrested for nonviolent crimes.
In some cases, she said, violent offenders “can be supervised efficiently in the community without posing community risk.”
Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, added that despite their unique status, veterans should not be the only ones to profit from this sort of program.
“A case can also be made — given that treatment is more effective and less expensive — that these kinds of supports be made available to a broader cross section of the population,” he said.
Only 1% of our population serves in the armed forces, I believe. Yet veterans make up 9% or prisoners in America. I don't think the young men and women who enlist are necessarily more prone to commit crimes than the rest of us. I think this speaks to how trauma and violence can affect people, how complex the overlap between mental health and substance abuse problems are, and how readily we exploit our labor in this country - including soldiers - and toss them aside when they lose their market value.
As I look through these articles on veterans and criminal justice, I see both explicit and implied the presumption that military service in and of itself - not one's conduct, character, or the actual crime - is what entitles vets to a "break" in the justice system. Lots of people should get a break.
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Veterans' Project Offers Support to Those in Criminal Justice
New York Times
By SIMON AKAM
Published: July 7, 2009
A new pilot program called the Veterans Project, announced on Tuesday and set to begin in Queens, Brooklyn and Nassau County, aims to help keep them out of prison.
“If a veteran finds themselves in the criminal justice system, they deserve a helping hand,” Jonathan Lippman, chief judge of the State Court of Appeals, said at a news conference to announce the project at the Veterans Affairs Hospital on East 23rd Street.
The project — a collaboration between county prosecutors, the Department of Veterans Affairs and health care providers — will try to divert veterans who commit nonviolent crimes away from prison while helping them with underlying issues like homelessness or substance abuse.
Bruce Burnham, 63, a
“I had a cousin that ended up serving time,” Mr. Burnham said, adding that many of his former comrades got into trouble when they returned home. “Now this is a positive step forward,” he said.
As part of the project, defendants with military service will be identified as they soon as enter the justice system. They will be helped to get treatment and support services to address problems that many of them face, like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Those who complete the program may have their charges dismissed or reduced, or win a reduction in their sentences.
According to the Center for Mental Health Services National Gains Center, veterans account for 9 out of every 100 prisoners in
Prosecutors say many veterans get into legal trouble when they use alcohol or drugs to try to cope with traumatic memories. Sometimes the charge is drug possession or theft, but the underlying problem can often be addiction.
Last year a RAND Corporation study said that nearly 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans — 300,000 in all — reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, but that only slightly more than half seek treatment.
On Tuesday, Charles J. Hynes, the
While the project received wide support, some legal advocates said that its scope is too limited.
JoAnne Page, the chief executive officer of the Fortune Society, which promotes prisoners’ re-entry into society, said that the move to keep defendants from prison should not be limited to veterans who have been arrested for nonviolent crimes.
In some cases, she said, violent offenders “can be supervised efficiently in the community without posing community risk.”
Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, added that despite their unique status, veterans should not be the only ones to profit from this sort of program.
“A case can also be made — given that treatment is more effective and less expensive — that these kinds of supports be made available to a broader cross section of the population,” he said.
Suicide Among Incarcerated Veterans
Here's a recent article on suicide and jailed vets at the The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (pdf) - lengthy and clinical, though.
Veterans Courts: Progress?
These are beginning to show up around the country now - recently in Nevada. There's some controversy bout whether or not it's appropriate to have a separate court for veterans (PTSD is caused by many kinds of traumas). Many communities in America are war zones, in fact: why not send an 18-year old gang member who watched his brother get murdered at the age of 11 to a veterans' court? We must not believe the legal system works that well if we have to keep making special courts to divert people to treatment and out of the CJ system. perhaps instead of making more special court, we should incorporate more of the elements that make those courts successful into our "regular" justice system.
Acknowledging and responding to the special needs of veterans in the criminal justice system is essential - especially now that we're entering our ninth year of war, increasing our troop deployments in Afghanistan, and have no end to combat in sight. Many soldiers - including Weekend Warriors in the Guard and Reserves - have done three or four tours of duty already with little respite or attention to the toll it's taken on their lives. Equally important is providing military personnel - and their families - with sufficient mental health and substance abuse treatment resources, relief from combat duty, crisis and marital support, economic support - especially adequate wages - and fair and humane treatment before they end up criminalized. The shooting at Fort Hood is a case in point.
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Judge Robert Russell stepped down from his bench and walked into the gallery where men and women accused of stealing, drug offenses, and other nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors fidgeted in plastic chairs.
"Good afternoon," he said, smiling, and talked for a minute about the session ahead.
With the welcoming tone set, Russell headed back behind the bench, where he will mete out justice with a disarming mix of small talk and life-altering advice.
While the defendants in this court have been arrested on charges that could mean potential prison time and damaging criminal records, they have another important trait in common: All have served their country in the military.
That combination has landed them here, in veterans treatment court, the first of its kind in the country.
Russell is the head of a courtroom team of veterans' advocates and volunteers determined to make this brush with the criminal justice system these veterans' last.
"They look to the right or to the left, they're sitting there with another vet, and it's a more calming, therapeutic environment," Russell said. "Rather than them being of the belief that 'people don't really understand me,' or 'they don't know what it's like' - well, it's a room full of folks who do."
If the veterans adhere to a demanding one- to two-year regimen of weekly to monthly court appearances, drug testing, and counseling for any combination of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse, or anger management, they could see their charges dismissed, or at least stay out of jail.
After counting 300 veterans in the local courts last year, the judge tailor-made the treatment court to address not only veterans' crimes, but their unique mental health issues.
Charles Lewis, who stood before Russell at a recent session, may be the kind of defendant the judge had in mind. The 25-year-old acknowledged walking out in frustration from his last counseling session.
"We all know that you're a good person who at times has done some inappropriate things," Russell told him. "It's time to get past the nonsense, don't you think?"
Lewis nodded in agreement. A jet mechanic four years into what he thought would be a 20-year Navy career, he severely injured his leg on the flight deck of the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2004 and was discharged.
Forced to rethink his future before his 22d birthday, he returned to Buffalo, where he found work as a laborer and in the concrete business before starting his own concrete company.
After taking on more work than he could handle, Lewis said he found himself charged with larceny in December for allegedly keeping a $3,000 deposit from a customer for a job that never got done.
A daily habit of prescription pain pills for the plates and pins in his leg compounded the problems of someone who had known only the rigidity of the military from the time he was 18.
"It was hard to adjust," Lewis said later at his home in Buffalo's north end. "I was used to that structure. That whole time [in the Navy] I was doing what I was supposed to do, then I got out and it was just not working."
A 30-day stay in rehabilitation to get off prescription drugs began his path through veterans' treatment court. "I'm doing really good now," he said.
Russell believes the need for courts like his will only grow, pointing to the 1.6 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has been highly praised by the Veterans Affairs Administration and other veterans' organizations.
"What I appreciate about this is this isn't letting people off for what they do, it's just getting them the care that they need," said Patrick Campbell, legislative director for Iraq Veterans of America.
The group has been working with Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, on legislation that would provide grants for the creation of veterans treatment courts like the one in Buffalo.
"A lot of veterans, when they come home, find the transition difficult and we all turn to different things to get through those times," said Campbell, who served in Iraq in 2004-2005. "If we're not lucky enough to have a strong family social network to hold us together in those difficult times, people turn to drugs, turn to alcohol."
"All of a sudden they find themselves in a position where, instead of being the outstanding patriot who's always been the person everyone looks to, they find themselves on the other end of the law," Campbell said. "This is going to get service members back to serving their country again."
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Special court for veterans addresses more than crime
Treatment for mental health issues included
BUFFALO - The first clue that the Tuesday afternoon session in Part 4 of Buffalo City Court was not like other criminal proceedings came just before it started.Judge Robert Russell stepped down from his bench and walked into the gallery where men and women accused of stealing, drug offenses, and other nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors fidgeted in plastic chairs.
"Good afternoon," he said, smiling, and talked for a minute about the session ahead.
With the welcoming tone set, Russell headed back behind the bench, where he will mete out justice with a disarming mix of small talk and life-altering advice.
While the defendants in this court have been arrested on charges that could mean potential prison time and damaging criminal records, they have another important trait in common: All have served their country in the military.
That combination has landed them here, in veterans treatment court, the first of its kind in the country.
Russell is the head of a courtroom team of veterans' advocates and volunteers determined to make this brush with the criminal justice system these veterans' last.
"They look to the right or to the left, they're sitting there with another vet, and it's a more calming, therapeutic environment," Russell said. "Rather than them being of the belief that 'people don't really understand me,' or 'they don't know what it's like' - well, it's a room full of folks who do."
If the veterans adhere to a demanding one- to two-year regimen of weekly to monthly court appearances, drug testing, and counseling for any combination of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse, or anger management, they could see their charges dismissed, or at least stay out of jail.
After counting 300 veterans in the local courts last year, the judge tailor-made the treatment court to address not only veterans' crimes, but their unique mental health issues.
Charles Lewis, who stood before Russell at a recent session, may be the kind of defendant the judge had in mind. The 25-year-old acknowledged walking out in frustration from his last counseling session.
"We all know that you're a good person who at times has done some inappropriate things," Russell told him. "It's time to get past the nonsense, don't you think?"
Lewis nodded in agreement. A jet mechanic four years into what he thought would be a 20-year Navy career, he severely injured his leg on the flight deck of the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2004 and was discharged.
Forced to rethink his future before his 22d birthday, he returned to Buffalo, where he found work as a laborer and in the concrete business before starting his own concrete company.
After taking on more work than he could handle, Lewis said he found himself charged with larceny in December for allegedly keeping a $3,000 deposit from a customer for a job that never got done.
A daily habit of prescription pain pills for the plates and pins in his leg compounded the problems of someone who had known only the rigidity of the military from the time he was 18.
"It was hard to adjust," Lewis said later at his home in Buffalo's north end. "I was used to that structure. That whole time [in the Navy] I was doing what I was supposed to do, then I got out and it was just not working."
A 30-day stay in rehabilitation to get off prescription drugs began his path through veterans' treatment court. "I'm doing really good now," he said.
Russell believes the need for courts like his will only grow, pointing to the 1.6 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has been highly praised by the Veterans Affairs Administration and other veterans' organizations.
"What I appreciate about this is this isn't letting people off for what they do, it's just getting them the care that they need," said Patrick Campbell, legislative director for Iraq Veterans of America.
The group has been working with Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, on legislation that would provide grants for the creation of veterans treatment courts like the one in Buffalo.
"A lot of veterans, when they come home, find the transition difficult and we all turn to different things to get through those times," said Campbell, who served in Iraq in 2004-2005. "If we're not lucky enough to have a strong family social network to hold us together in those difficult times, people turn to drugs, turn to alcohol."
"All of a sudden they find themselves in a position where, instead of being the outstanding patriot who's always been the person everyone looks to, they find themselves on the other end of the law," Campbell said. "This is going to get service members back to serving their country again."
Governor Brewer: Remember Vets in Prison
War veterans are disproportionately represented in U.S. prisons, and there are still war resisters in U.S. military brigs facing courts martial or serving sentences as prisoners of conscience. Let's make sure none of them are forgotten on Veterans Day this year.
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Monday, November 9, 2009
• 2:00 p.m. – Governor Brewer to Speak at the Banner Health Dedication
and Blessing of Cardon Children’s Medical Center
Cardon Children's Medical Center
1400 South Dobson Road, Mesa
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
• 1:25 p.m. – Governor to Attend Arizona State Veterans Home Barbecue
And Veterans Celebration
Arizona State Veterans Home
4141 North 3rd Street, Phoenix
Thursday, November 12, 2009
• 2 p.m. – Governor to Speak at Street Renaming Ceremony in Honor of
Silvestre Herrera
Arizona State Veterans Home
4141 North 3rd Street, Phoenix
• 5:00 p.m. – Governor to Speak at the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Celebration
Arizona State Capitol Mall
17th Avenue between Washington and Jefferson Streets
Friday, November 13, 2009
• 12:00 p.m. - Governor to Speak At Arizona Character Education Foundation’s
10th Anniversary Celebration
Salt River Project PERA Club Facility
1 East Continental Drive, Tempe
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Public Schedule For Governor Jan Brewer
Monday, November 9, 2009
• 11:00 a.m. – Governor to Visit Bishop’s Storehouse in Mesa
LDS Employment Resource Center, Conference Room
235 South El Dorado Circle, Mesa
LDS Employment Resource Center, Conference Room
235 South El Dorado Circle, Mesa
• 2:00 p.m. – Governor Brewer to Speak at the Banner Health Dedication
and Blessing of Cardon Children’s Medical Center
Cardon Children's Medical Center
1400 South Dobson Road, Mesa
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
• 4:00 p.m. – Governor to Hold Bill Signing Ceremony – SB 1403 –
Renewable, high-wage Industry Incentives
Greater Phoenix Economic Council
2 North Central Avenue, Suite 2500,
Renewable, high-wage Industry Incentives
Greater Phoenix Economic Council
2 North Central Avenue, Suite 2500,
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
• 9:30 a.m. – Governor to Participate in Veterans Day Parade
Phoenix VA Health Care System
650 East Indian School Road, Phoenix
Phoenix VA Health Care System
650 East Indian School Road, Phoenix
• 1:25 p.m. – Governor to Attend Arizona State Veterans Home Barbecue
And Veterans Celebration
Arizona State Veterans Home
4141 North 3rd Street, Phoenix
Thursday, November 12, 2009
• 8:30 a.m. - Governor to Speak at 88th Annual Meeting of Arizona Farm Bureau
Carefree Resort and Villas
37220 Mule Train Road, Carefree
Carefree Resort and Villas
37220 Mule Train Road, Carefree
• 2 p.m. – Governor to Speak at Street Renaming Ceremony in Honor of
Silvestre Herrera
Arizona State Veterans Home
4141 North 3rd Street, Phoenix
• 5:00 p.m. – Governor to Speak at the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Celebration
Arizona State Capitol Mall
17th Avenue between Washington and Jefferson Streets
Friday, November 13, 2009
• 12:00 p.m. - Governor to Speak At Arizona Character Education Foundation’s
10th Anniversary Celebration
Salt River Project PERA Club Facility
1 East Continental Drive, Tempe
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