Issues in Providing Services to Trauma-Affected Veterans In and Out of Veterans Treatment Courts

Justice-involved veterans face a number of challenges in the criminal-legal system, including receiving the proper care and treatment for trauma experienced during their service to the nation. This book examines novel approaches to care for veterans and identifies some of the barriers they face. One strategy toward ameliorating these challenges was the formation of specialized Veterans Treatment Courts (VTC) in 2008. Now numbering well over 600 courts nationwide, VTCs streamline the justice process and provide the necessary structure, services, and support to address the underlying issues behind their offending behaviors. The project upon which this volume is based involved in-depth interviews with 145 stakeholders in 20 geographically dispersed and characteristically unique VTCs in the United States. Interviewees included judges, court coordinators, prosecutors, treatment providers, defense counsel, probation officers, and others working as coordinated teams to provide a network of care enabling the justice-involved veterans to address their specific criminogenic needs and to promote behaviors resulting in subsequent desistence from crime. In addition to the voices of those working daily in the specialty court realm, the book also includes chapters on an issue that was broached often during semi-structured interviews: military sexual assault. Survivors of sexual abuse in the military report substantial trauma associated with in-service victimization, and these final chapters shed light on the extent of military sexual assault and its impacts on veterans as they transition to civilian life. This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and practitioners of law, criminology and criminal justice, public affairs and psychology. It was originally published as a special issue of Victims & Offenders.