Street roots
3
Sept. 28, 2012
Veterans could soon join ranks of specialty courts
BY ROBERT BRITT
S T A F F W R IT E R
t’s Wednesday morning at the Clark
County courthouse in Vancouver, Wash.,
and Navy veteran Eric Vance stands
before the district court judge. Appearing
the middle of the day’s hurried docket,
Vance requests that two bench warrants
stemming from a DUII charge be quashed in
exchange for his application to the county’s
veterans treatment court.
Down the hall, retired Army command
sergeant major Norm Hayes is finishing his
monthly check-in with the veterans court.
There is nothing hurried in this courtroom.
Along with a dozen or so other veterans,
Hayes appears before the judge to talk about
how treatment is going. The meetings are
going well. He even went on a weekend trip
recently. When Hayes is finished, the judge
— who greets each of the court’s participants
by first name — steps down from behind his
bench to present Hayes with a court mug as
the room fills with applause.
Across the Columbia River, a similar
veteran’s program may soon be coming to
the Portland area.
Multnomah County Commissioner Judy
Shiprack and other local officials are looking
at ways to link military veterans entering the
criminal justice system for low-level crimes
with rehabilitation services and counseling
as an alternative to traditional sentencing
and incarceration.
Based largely on the drug court model,
veterans treatment courts provide court-
mandated treatment in exchange for the
chance to have criminal charges cleared
from veteran’s records. Instead of serving
time for a crime that can be linked to mental
health or substance abuse problems
stemming from his or her military
I
e x p erien c e, th e v e te ra n w ould se e k care a t a
V eteran s Affairs m edical c e n te r o r from
providers in the community.
“My vision is that this is a service loop
that is connected through the court system,”
Shiprack says.
Portland already has similar courts in
place to target problems relating to
substance abuse, mental health, drunken
driving and minor offenses such as petty
theft.
In a survey of people booked at the
Multnomah County jail from April through
September 2011, only 2.1 percent of those
self-identifying as veterans had a
dishonorable discharge from the military.
Nearly 80 percent were not trouble makers
while on active duty, according to the report,
which prompts the question: What happened
to these veterans after discharge that
resulted in their entry into the criminal
justice system?
“With all of these specialty courts, we’re
seeing a lot of veterans,” Shiprack says. “We
are probably not aware of all the veterans we
are seeing and we are probably missing a lot
of opportunities that are coming our way
through these existing specialty courts to
connect veterans to services that exist
within the community.”
Shiprack’s office plans to create a veteran-
specific caseload in the adult probation
department, which will link probation-
sentenced veterans with probation officers
who have history of military service. She is
also partnering with the circuit court and
the VA’s justice outreach office to start a
veteran’s docket, which would reserve a
in block of time for court to try cases against
veterans while appropriate service providers
are in the courtroom.
Tom Mann, who oversees the veterans
services division of the Oregon Department
of Veterans’ Affairs, has also been involved
in the planning of a veteran-specific docket.
“It doesn’t take any extra funding or
staffing necessarily,” Mann says. “You’re just
blocking out a day when you’re going to see
your veteran clients. And you put veteran
advocates in there. You put people from
ODVA, the federal VA and other people that
have programs for veterans.
“What you do is you determine if that
veteran is a candidate first for the veteran
docket -meaning that their crime was such
that we believe there were mitigating
circumstances, and you ask them if they will
be willing and interested to go into a
program process instead of going to jail. And
that could include counseling through the
federal VA; it could include domiciliary or an
in-patient thing — whatever their issue is.”
hiprack says creating a veterans court or
docket in Portland is a pertinent issue
because the number of returning veterans
on the rise, and some - but not all - of
these veterans are ending up entangled in
the criminal justice system.
Mann attributes much of this contact with
law enforcement to the unseen wounds of
war, especially when left untreated.
Traumatic brain injury and post traumatic
stress disorder can lead to a loss of
inhibition or restraint and can cause some
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p e o p le to a c t out, M ann says. “So so m e
people will have responses to their
disabilities in such a way that ends up in an
engagement with law enforcement,” he says
“It becomes something that needs to be
treated,” Mann says. “You can put the
person in jail, but that’s not going to stop
the problem because they have an organic
disability that needs to be treated. So we
look at those kind of cases, case-by-case, and
we say ‘OK, we think there are services for
this person. We think certainly the crime
they committed was directly related to this
combat issue, and we think that in this case
rehabilitation works.”
Substance abuse is also a common
problem, Mann says, as some veterans will
attempt to self medicate with alcohol and
drugs to control their symptoms. Part of the
problem lies in the military culture.
“Our warrior culture is, ‘Suck it up and
drive on.’ We don’t ask for help,” says Mann,
himself an Army veteran.
“That’s why court dockets are important,”
he says. “Because it gets those people in
there and it kind of forces their hand to say,
look, you are at the bottom of the ladder at
this point. You’ve got a choice, I can put you
in jail or you can finally suck it up and say I
need some help and we’ll get you the help
you
need.”
Unfortunately, jail is
where many
veterans can
end up. According to Oregon Department of
Corrections, there were 2,029 veterans in
state prisons as of late July. This number
accounts for more than 14 percent of the
state’s inmate population.
Vance and Hayes each entered the Clark
County criminal justice system because of
drunken driving-related charges, which data
suggests is not uncommon among veterans.
A 2009 survey conducted by the Veterans
Intervention Project examined all the arrests
and bookings of veterans in Travis County,
Texas, and found DUII to be the most
common offense for veterans.
Hayes and Vance are each embracing the
help available at the VA campus in
Vancouver, however, as both attend
substance abuse counseling.
Chris Deutsch, of the National Association
of Drug Court Professional, a nonprofit
advocacy group specializing in therapeutic
courts, says there is still much to learn
about the pattern of veterans in the courts.
“Nobody is really tracking veterans in the
criminal justice system. Only now are
jurisdictions starting to even identify
veterans when they come in. What they’re
finding is that there are a number of
veterans who are being arrested for crimes
that can be linked specifically to mental
health disorders or substance abuse
disorders. And the Veterans Treatment
is Court model gives a community a solution,
rather than sort of cycle them through the
criminal justice system where they’re most
likely to just re-offend and re-offend, to really
make that arrest the intervention that they
need to turn their life around.”
Deutsch adds that on a very practical
level, initiating veterans treatment courts is
about economizing resources, pushing the
check for the services to the federal
government rather than local.
“In communities that have a drug court or
a mental health court and have veterans
coming through, it behooves them to get
those veterans connected to treatment
through the VA or through the state
department of veterans’ affairs because
that’s treatment the veteran has earned and
is paid for,” Deutsch says. “That frees up
space for drug court participants to get
treatment in the community. But more
importantly, I think, there’s the fact that we
know what happens when a generation of
veterans comes home and doesn’t get the
support that they need. We saw that with
the Vietnam-era veterans.”
Conserving local funding is another
reason behind Shiprack’s work to create a
veterans court in Portland.
“We’re working in Multnomah County
with diminishing resources and an increasing
service population for more than a decade
now,” she says. “And we are just really
looking to the VA to be a resource, and a
partnering resource here with our court
system.”
According to a cost comparison conducted
by the veterans justice outreach office at the
Portland VA medical center, utilizing VA
services instead of locally funded resources
can easily save thousands of dollars for each
veteran. One veteran receiving six months of
care for PTSD, substance abuse, and
needing some inpatient treatment, could
cost as much as $7,437 under Medicaid and
the Oregon Health Plan.
The nation’s first veterans treatment court
began in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2008 and has been
lauded as a successful way to keep veterans
out of the criminal justice system. Its
combination of supportive services,
supervised treatment and peer m entors-
themselves veterans-led to a reported
recidivism rate of zero through its first two
years.
According to official counts, there were 95
veterans courts in the nation in early 2011,
but Deustch estimates there are around 120
today, with another 100 being planned.
Klamath Falls became the first such veteran
court in Oregon in November 2010.
Advocates for the veteran’s treatment
courts are quick to point out that these
programs are designed to prevent veterans
from thinking they have carte blanche to
break the law without fear of prosecution.
“This is not a free pass. This is an
opportunity to have a win-win situation,”
Mann says. “But if the veteran doesn’t do
their part and be part of the solution, that
jail option is still on the table.”
The Clark County veterans treatment
court held one such example. About 15
minutes after celebrating Hayes’ successes,
the presiding judge ordered another veteran
to five days in jail for failing to comply with
his substance abuse counseling plan.
pproximately 30 people have gone
through Clark County’s veterans court
this year, according to Larry Smith,
Vancouver city councilman and president of
the Veteran’s Advisory Board. He says the
goal is to double that number, and he isn’t
surprised that Multnomah County is looking
to create a similar court of its own.
“They’re e x tre m e ly valuable in th e Jong
term, that’s why they’re so popular,” Smith
says. “Not only do they get a guy or gal out
of the slammer — because if they abide by
what the judge says and do what he says as
far as rehabilitating yourself and you
graduate, your record is clean—but you will
also have a clean record, so it’s not going to
get in the way of a job opportunity.”
Concern over veterans treatment courts
does exist, however. These specialty or
therapeutic courts, according to some, hold
the possibility of losing the individual
advocacy that a defense attorney affords in
traditional court.
But ultimately Mann and others insist that
the focus is on getting veterans the services
they need. “We have a moral obligation to do
what’s right for them,” he says. “If their
condition is causing them to act out in ways
that we think are treatable that will be
appropriately managed through a court
docket, then we think that is the exact way
to go.”
Hayes’ year in the Clark County Veterans
Therapeutic Court is almost over, and when
finished, his record will be wiped clean. His
involvement with the veterans court will
continue though, as he says he plans on
returning as a volunteer mentor.
“My job in the Army was taking care of
soldiers,” he says. “That doesn’t have to stop
just because I’m retired.”
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