Reaching out to returning vets

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Throughout the past year, Krista L. Ginger has talked to friends who’d recently returned from deployment in Iraq.

One confided his troubles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Everyone she spoke with expressed concerns for other vets with whom they’d served, who not only suffered from PTSD, but because of it, they were unemployed, their families were no longer intact, they suffered from alcoholism or other addictions, or they were homeless.

It was Ginger’s impression that too many were ending up in the criminal justice system.

“It makes such a difference if you talk to someone, firsthand, about how it [their deployment] has affected them,” says Ginger, the executive assistant and legislative liaison for Wisconsin’s State Public Defender’s Office.

She decided she needed to do more than provide a sympathetic ear. So Ginger sat down with a group of key players within the justice system and state government, including the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and mental health professionals. After much brainstorming and research, they developed the Wisconsin Veterans Intervention Program (WI-VIP).

A Multi-faceted Approach

WI-VIP has three components.

The first utilizes law students. The Frank J. Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School will develop and facilitate an outreach program to assist in a whole range of problems facing returning vets, from housing, divorce and drug dependency. The goal, says Ginger, is to address veterans’ needs with a multidisciplinary approach, emphasizing the resolution of any civil legal needs, to head off any potential negative brushes with the criminal justice system.

The second component to WI-VIP is the creation of institutional treatment programs for returning veterans who’ve already been through the criminal justice system, and are incarcerated, parolees or probationers.

The third component — one which is rapidly becoming a reality — is the initiation of treatment courts and diversion programs for veterans in Wisconsin’s criminal justice system.

In support of the three components, the State Public Defender’s Office is planning a comprehensive training program for defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, probation and parole agents, and law enforcement in spring 2009. The training will focus on the effects of PTSD, and how to effectively interact with veterans with it, and other service-related disorders.

Dr. Dean D. Krahn, chief of the Mental Health Service Line at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans’ Hospital in Madison, says national figures suggest that roughly 30 percent of vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from some type of mental-health affliction, such as depression and/or substance abuse. Of that 30 percent, more than half, about 17 percent, suffers from PTSD.

“It’s a sizable chunk of our returning vets, he observes.

In Wisconsin, approximately 15,000 veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom have been discharged from October 2001 through November 2008. Krahn says, presumably, the national percentages of those with mental-health disabilities are an accurate estimate for the state’s vets as well.

Pilot Court in the Works

The court is modeled after the nation’s first veterans’ treatment court in Buffalo, N.Y. Judge Robert T. Russell presides over that court, which oversees the progress of veterans charged with nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors.

Russell came to Madison last October to explain how his court works, and to generate interest in the state. Twenty-four mentors work with 70 program participants. Notably, he said the program requires no additional costs, and it has been so successful that vets have walked into the courthouse and have asked if they need to be arrested to participate in it. Last month, a Wisconsin delegation visited Russell’s court in session.

Among the group was Rock County Circuit Court Judge James P. Daley, who spent nearly 40 years in the military himself, and who plans to preside over Wisconsin’s pilot veterans’ treatment court. Daley anticipates it will be up and running by mid-summer. Daley is volunteering much of his spare time, meeting with veterans’ groups to recruit mentors, and working with justice system personnel to put systems in place to identify veterans. He’s also looking for local treatment providers.

Before the treatment court can get started, the Veterans’ Administration social workers must train the mentors. Daley notes that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have involved heavy use of IEDs, also known as roadside bombs, that frequently cause brain injuries with long-lasting effects.

Also on the to-do list is to try to figure out how many individuals the court might serve, and to draft local court rules for it.

“Prosecutors, defense attorneys, courts and the Veterans’ Administration are all very interested in going forward with this. Rarely do you see as united a front as that in the criminal justice system. … Now, we just need to put theory into practice,” says Daley. “Our whole goal is to see what works, and what doesn’t, so our veterans’ treatment court can be exported elsewhere within the state.”

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a U.S. Army veteran, is watching what happens in Rock County very closely. Chisholm also visited the Buffalo court, and hopes Milwaukee will establish its second treatment court, for veterans, within the next few months. (The first is a drug treatment court, over which Judge M. Joseph Donald presides.)

“I don’t see [monetary] resources or a lack of volunteer mentors as potential roadblocks to the program,” says Chisholm. “All it’s going to take is commitment.”

Ginger agrees. “What we’ve learned is we don’t need a lot of money — just people who are willing to make the effort. The momentum’s building, and we’re hoping all aspects of the program will be in place by year’s end.”

It’s also encouraging that federal legislation, the Services, Education, and Rehabilitation for Veterans Act, was introduced by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala.) in July 2008, to create veterans’ drug treatment courts nationwide. The SERV Act is modeled on the Veterans Treatment Court in Buffalo.