Veterans' Healthy Living Winter 2015
Veterans and the Law: A Helping Hand
Over 100,000 Veterans live in New Hampshire, and some of them have difficulty adjusting to life when they return home. A few even end up in the court system after committing a crime. Thanks to Veterans’ advocates and health care providers, some of those Veterans are now getting appropriate help instead of simply being sent away to “do their time.”
The first session of the Veterans Behavioral Health Track program was held in 2014 in Nashua (New Hampshire) District Court, and plans are underway for a similar court for Grafton County, located near Vermont’s White River Junction VAMC. In fact, there are about 160 Veterans’ courts nationwide. The first was founded in 2008 in Buffalo, New York, by Judge Robert Russell after he noticed increasing numbers of veterans on the docket of his drug and mental health courts.
Why the need? Many Veterans come home with one or more unique issues that range from depression, substance abuse, nightmares, sleep disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Unless treated, these issues can escalate until Veterans find themselves on the wrong side of the law and facing prison time. So, the new program doesn’t offer legal advice to Veterans, but it focuses on intense treatment to help them get back on track and keep them from repeating their crimes.
The Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO) Program at the VA Medical Center in Manchester offers similar help to Veterans in trouble and maintains an active caseload of Veterans with pending criminal charges.Its goal is to ensure that eligible, justice-involved Veterans have timely access to VA services as appropriate. Veterans Justice Outreach Specialists are responsible for direct outreach, assessment, and case management for justice-involved Veterans in local courts and jails, and liaison with local justice system partners.
Also at Manchester is the Health Care for Re-Entry Veterans Program, which helps incarcerated Veterans successfully rejoin the community through supports including those addressing mental health and substance use problems. The Readjustment Counseling Service’s Vet Center Programs feature community-based locations and outreach activities that help identify homeless Veterans and match homeless Veterans with necessary services.
To learn more about Veterans Treatment Courts, go to www.justiceforvets.org.
For more information about Veterans Justice Outreach, go to www.va.gov/homeless/vjo.asp.
For a list of Veterans’ courts by state, see
www.ncsc.org/Topics/Problem-Solving-Courts/Veterans-Court/State-Links.aspx
