City launches treatment court for vets

[cec]

City launches treatment court for vets




By Matthew Daneman - USA Today
Posted : Monday Jun 2, 2008 8:36:36 EDT

BUFFALO, N.Y. — When police entered Tom Irish’s suburban Buffalo home March 9 responding to a call about a disturbance, the 59-year-old Army veteran says he did not see uniformed officers.
He says he was drunk on vodka, suffering from a flashback to his wartime experiences, and saw in his mind the Viet Cong soldiers he fought close to 40 years ago.
“I’m still in recovery, still facing myself,” Irish said as he stood last month before Buffalo City Court Judge Robert Russell in a courtroom half-filled with fellow military veterans in trouble with the law.
Instead of time behind bars, Irish is in counseling. The felony weapons possession charge against him — for brandishing a loaded shotgun at police — likely will be dropped if he finishes everything required of him by Buffalo’s veterans treatment court, according to Hank Pirowski, project director for Buffalo City Court.
Russell, who created Buffalo’s drug treatment court in 1995 and mental health treatment court in 2003, started holding sessions in January in what is, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Drug Court Institute, the nation’s first veterans’ treatment court.
The defendants all are military veterans or family members. The court typically handles nonviolent offenses, Russell said, with the veterans required to get mental health or addiction counseling, find jobs, stay clean and sober and get their lives back on track.
Court meets weekly or biweekly, with veterans reporting back about once a month to update the court on their progress, Russell said. The judge said that, based on his past experience with other treatment courts, the veterans tend to remain in treatment court a year or more before making enough progress to graduate and see their charges reduced or cases adjourned.
“It’s just a fantastic idea, instead of punishing them, honoring them for their service,” said C. West Huddleston, CEO of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, a nonprofit organization started in 1994 to advocate for drug courts.
“Unfortunately, the courts are seeing an increase in veterans emerging who have some real specialized needs,” he said. “Ultimately, we’re trying to save people’s lives and transform them back to health.”
Huddleston predicted “there will be a number of communities that follow the lead of Buffalo,” but neither he nor VA were aware of others ready to emerge.
Huddleston said the idea of specialized criminal justice treatment for veterans started two years ago in Rochester, N.Y., when John Schwartz, a city court judge, began having VA staff take part in his drug treatment court.
The Department of Health and Human Services this year started offering grant money to community programs that divert people with trauma-related disorders, especially veterans, from the criminal justice system, said David Morrissette, a project officer with the federal agency’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Citing a study released in April by the Rand Corp., a California-based research organization, Morrissette said 19 percent of the veterans who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — roughly 300,000 people — report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression.
A waiting list for mentors
In 2006, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that gives California judges the discretion to divert veterans convicted of crimes into alternative sentencing programs.
In the first six months of 2007, the only period for which statistics are available, 300 of the defendants going through Buffalo City Court were identified as military veterans, Pirowski said. Overall, the court handled 30,957 criminal cases in 2007, according to Deputy Court Clerk Kim Delmont.
The offenses the court handles usually start out of some mental health or substance abuse issue, said Erie County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Kubiniec. The court’s approach — with offenders facing prosecution if they don’t go through treatment — “protects the public safety as well as helps the offender,” Kubiniec said.
Each session of the court addresses about 20 western New York veterans and some family members for offenses from theft to drug possession, Pirowski said.
The court has a waiting list of veterans wanting to volunteer as peer mentors for the defendants and help persuade them to seek counseling, he added.
“First they see a vet, they see you’re not part of the court,” said mentor Jason Jaskula, an Army veteran and Buffalo-based detective with the Veterans Affairs Police.
“You can find out the root problems of things. The mentor is able to point them in the right direction.”
Jimmy Smothermon, who served in the Air Force in the early 1970s, has, by his own admission, been in trouble with the law on and off ever since then.
Today, going through veterans treatment court on a misdemeanor drug possession charge, the 53-year-old Buffalo man is in a Christian residential drug rehab program.
“It’s making all the difference in the world after seeing veterans like myself in the same boat,” Smothermon said. “It’s a veterans’ program. That makes me want to stay clean all the more.”



City launches treatment court for vets - Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times



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[Woodmonkey]

This is a good idea.