Kapner testimony: VA peer mentors and veterans' structural advantage
Kapner describes VA peer mentors who support veterans in court, veteran justice outreach coordinators who help coordinate care for PTSD and traumatic brain injury, and the advantage that veterans' military training prepares them for structured program environments, leading to higher graduation rates.
There are certain things about Veterans Court that sets it apart from other alternatives to incarceration.
The most important is the commonality of experience from the participants themselves.
In mental health court or drug court or other ATI programs, people are on their own journey, and it's difficult.
In Veterans Court, you are on your own journey, but you are going down that road with people who have experienced very many things that you have also.
There's a lot of camaraderie.
There's a spirit of core.
And in the rough moments when you're trying to, you know, overcome drug addiction or trying to stay on your medication,
despite side effects and you're dealing with homelessness or other problems, that your fellow veterans are there to help you.
And that's not true in a lot of the other ATI programs.
The programming that veterans get tends to be a little bit better than other programs that are not veteran-specific.
If you're eligible for VA benefits, so much the better.
Those programs tend to be well-funded.
Most of our clients are not in veterans or VA programs per se, but the VA does help fill the gaps and coordinate aftercare and certainly with reporting to the court.
Veterans can also be rehabilitated in the classic sense of the word.
Many of our clients who have mental health issues, have drug addiction issues, come to us later in life, right?
Like they don't...
Turn 20 or 19 and suddenly become criminal justice involved.
Often they're very functional at just the minimal level.
They hit their 30s or 40s and something happens and they fall off.
And it's harder to rehabilitate folks who have just sort of survived, they've just sort of gone below the radar.
But veterans are different.
Veterans have accomplished a great deal.
In order to get into veterans court, you do not have to be honorably discharged, but you certainly do have to have been graduated from basic training and
often been assigned very important jobs, you know, not just combat, but handling jet fuel, handling explosives, even administrative work, dealing with other veterans.
These are very important jobs.
And to the extent that people are coming through a period of mental health crisis or drug addiction, it's just that much easier to bring them back to a place where they've already been, as opposed to try to get them to a spot where they've really never been.
And veterans have a...
A tremendous advantage there, and I think it speaks to the efficiency of veterans.
Court that it just really accomplishes really what we'd like to see in all the alternatives to incarceration programs.