Veterans Treatment Courts

• Author: Julie Marie Baldwin
• Pages: 195-223

195

Chapter

Criminal defense lawyers know that courts can be places of despair and

shame, made worse by the public’s dislike of our clients and the lack of

sufficient community resources. This is not the case with veterans treat-

ment courts. These courts are places where the defendants believe that they

can succeed. Although they may feel genuine remorse for their offenses,

there is a certain pride in being with others who have served their country

and experienced the trauma of combat. The public’s understanding of post-

traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury is growing, and there is

greater recognition that the wounds of war are not just physical. Veterans

courts are created in order that those who appear before it succeed, and

everyone, including judges, prosecutors, and representatives from the U.S.

Department of Veterans Affairs, is committed to that goal.

In this chapter, Professor Julie Marie Baldwin describes how veterans

treatment courts function, and how criminal defense lawyers can assist

their clients in accessing the relatively abundant services available to this

population. In particular, she cites to a number of helpful resources on this

book’s website such as a Military Information Questionnaire and Eligibility

Worksheet. These resources are available at http://ambar.org/kelley.

• • •

Veterans treatment courts (VTCs) strive to improve the lives of military

veterans and service members who end up in the criminal justice system.

Although this is their general purpose, VTC programs are unstandardized,

varying even in fundamental aspects such as target population and structure.

Veterans Treatment Courts

Julie Marie Baldwin

12

196 • Representing People with Mental Disabilities

As such, the overall goal of this chapter is to provide you with pertinent

information and tools to help you better serve these clients and navigate

VTC programs. The chapter begins by conceptualizing VTCs with

a general explanation of their purpose and basic functioning. The

targets of these programs (i.e., individuals and their needs) are then

examined through an illustration of the constellation of issues and

their interrelatedness. Contributing to this portrait, various group and

subgroups of offenders and nonoffenders with and without a history of

military service are comparatively examined in terms of demographics

and legal and extra-legal challenges. With the VTC concept and its target

generally established, several challenges facing defense counsel in their

work with VTCs are addressed. These issues were identified by the author’s

research that primarily consisted of self-report data from various types of

defense counsel in contact with VTCs, as well as some nonparticipant

observation. The remaining sections of this chapter address some of the

particular issues that emerged and are organized by the following themes:

(1) client identification, (2) case transfers and program identification,

(3) eligibility, (4) admission, (5) involvement (defense counsel participation

and roles).

The Veterans Treatment Court Concept

Veterans treatment courts are a specialty court within the United States

criminal court system, originally created through judicial initiative in

the mid-2000s. They have been characterized as a hybrid of drug courts

and mental health courts due to similarities in philosophies, objectives,

goals, and procedures. Paralleling other specialized courts, VTC program

participation is theoretically voluntary with those eligible offered the

choice to participate and having the ability to drop out at any time. VTCs

also utilize the specialty court model: divert their participants from the

traditional criminal justice system to nontraditional channels of justice

that address the potential underlying causes and correlates of their

criminal behavior in an effort to reduce, if not eliminate, future contact

with the criminal justice system (see Figure 12.1). This nontraditional

route not only involves connecting participants with services that

target the correlates of their criminal behavior, but also mandating and

monitoring their participation in those services. These services include

those traditionally associated with therapeutic specialty courts (e.g.,

mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment). For participant