With more than 100,000 American veterans incarcerated in the United States, advocates say more investment is needed for the transition from military to civilian life and services for those who have run afoul of the law.
Representatives from specialty courts and veterans’ legal organizations pressed Congress Wednesday for expansion of the Veterans Treatment Courts system and reinstatement of some Veterans Affairs benefits for imprisoned former service members.
They argued that while not all veterans convicted of serious crimes would benefit, those with other-than-honorable discharges or service-connected mental health or substance use disorders should have opportunities to change their lives.
Corey Schramm, an Army veteran who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after three deployments to Iraq and later was arrested following a blackout that involved a weapon, said a Kansas Veterans Treatment Court, where he underwent two years of treatment and mentorship, saved his family.
“I was on and off probation before I went to Veterans Treatment Court, and when I showed up, I thought I was going to play the system, go through the motions. Boy was I ever wrong. … VTC is not a shortcut,” Schramm said during a hearing Wednesday before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
The first Veteran Treatment Court was established in 2008 in Buffalo, New York, to provide medical treatment, supervision and mentorship to former service members with non-violent criminal convictions related to service-connected addiction or mental health conditions.
Today there are more than 600, and the Department of Veterans Affairs employs hundreds of Veterans Justice Officers to support veterans in jails or who are on parole, probation or in the court system.
But many veterans remain unaware of programs tailored to them or lack access to available services because they were discharged from the military with general or other than honorable discharges, rendering them ineligible for many Veterans Affairs programs and benefits.
Others may have lost access to their VA benefits when they were sentenced, since disability compensation is reduced when a veteran is convicted of a felony and incarcerated for more than 60 days and VA health care benefits stop when they enter a prison health system.
Rose Carmen Goldberg, director of the Veterans Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law, argued that incarcerated veterans should have access to VA behavioral health care, which provides expertise in combat-related mental health issues, sexual trauma or other service-specific concerns.
“Access to VA mental healthcare can literally be lifesaving. Veterans with a less-than-honorable discharge who are unable to access VA mental healthcare have a significantly elevated risk of suicide, a difference that disappears if they gain access,” she said.
Goldberg proposed that imprisoned veterans have access to VA services through telehealth and she supports a bill, the “Get Justice-Involved Veterans Behavioral Assistance and Care for Key Health Outcomes to Maintain Empowerment Act,” sponsored by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., that would do that.
“VA-furnished mental healthcare is critical because it is more effective than private sector care,” Goldberg said.
Another key to improving outcomes for veterans who leave the service is reforming the Defense Department’s Transition Assistance Program, which several panelists argued was ineffective for preparing service members for non-military life, the panelists said.
According to retired Army Brig. Gen. David “Mac” MacEwen, director of the Veterans Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, the Defense Department spends billions on recruiting and training but just millions per year on TAP.
A commission found that TAP did not prepare 44% of its attendees for transition and 22% of transitioning service members never attended.
“The result is a fragmented and under-resourced system that leaves too many service members ill-prepared for civilian life. This lack of preparation increases their vulnerability to involvement in the criminal justice system,” MacEwen said.
Committee Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., conducted the hearing to better understand how to help veterans in judicial system and prevent them from entering it in the first place.
Moran sponsored a bill that was approved in January to fully fund Veterans Treatment Courts and provided $4 million to establish a National Center for Veterans Justice.
“We need to make sure that veterans who carry scars, with wounds — visible and invisible — are not forgotten,” Moran said.
Yet many jurisdictions do not have a veterans treatment court or those in law enforcement or the court system aren’t aware of these programs. Former Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, a former Marine, said more courts are needed, noting that in Kansas, of the 89 veterans who have graduated in the past decade from the VTC program, just five have later been arrested, a 95% success rate.
According to Nuss, one of the first graduates from the Johnson County VTC was a combat veteran who told him he would “have been better off being killed in Afghanistan instead of coming home and being arrested for committing a violent crime.”
“He described his shame to me [as], ‘I went from hero to villain,’” Nuss said. “This justice-involved veteran suffered from unhealed PTSD. As has been said about such veterans, the painful paradox is that fighting for one’s country can render one unfit to be its citizen.”
The panelists also pressed for changes to the GI Bill that allow more veterans to access education benefits. According to MacEwen, the original GI Bill called for all veterans except those who received dishonorable discharges to receive education benefits.
MacEwen said that since the original language for the GI Bill was written in 1944, the VA has changed eligibility requirements.
“Congress explicitly wrote that individuals who were not discharged under dishonorable conditions should be eligible for VA care and benefits. However, the VA’s implementation has not aligned with this plain text, resulting in the unlawful denial of services to hundreds of thousands of veterans with other than honorable discharges,” MacEwen said.
Moran said he believes the VA and Defense Department must improve services for transitioning veterans but community organizations are vital to supporting veterans as well.
“All of our witnesses provide examples of why we work to support veterans when they transition out of the military, and the value they add to our communities and our country after their service when that transition goes well,” Moran said.
Patricia Kime is a senior writer covering military and veterans health care, medicine and personnel issues.
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