BTM52-Veteran Courts and Justice For Vets

Welcome to episode 52 of Behind The Mission. A show that sparks conversations with PsychArmor's trusted partners and educational experts.

My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans, and their families. Find the show on all the podcast players by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission, our work in mission or supported by generous partnerships and sponsors, who also believe that education changes lives. This episode is brought to you by PsychArmor the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military cultural content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. And you can find more about www.psycharmor.org

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Scott Tirocchi, the Division Director for Justice for Vets, a division of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. He served in the United States Army Reserves and the Rhode Island Army National Guard for 21 years as a military police officer and retired as a major. While deployed in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2004, he served as a commander for the training and doctrine component of training assistant Group II to the Afghan National Army. Scott is a licensed professional counselor with certifications in clinical trauma and dialectical behavior therapy.

You can find out more about Scott by checking out his bio in our show notes. Let's get into my conversation with him and come back afterward to talk about some of the key points.

DUANE: You and I have a similar background, beyond both going to the same hairdresser, we're both army Veterans. We're both have a clinical background in both been involved in Veteran courts over our post-military careers. I'm interested to hear about how you came to work for Justice For Vets, throughout this part of your career.

SCOTT: Absolutely,it's pretty interesting. I started off working in community behavioral health, and then I worked in the jail setting. I worked for the prison and I come from the state of Rhode Island, which is pretty much the size of Fairfax County, Virgina. When I got involved in the department of corrections, I was able to go to the jails and the prisons.

So I saw both ends of the spectrum, but the jail, in particular, is very fascinating. What I did is during the intake process, when I used to be part of that, we'd have about 40, 45 inmates would come in or detainees every night would come into the prison system. And I started asking the question if they had served in the military. And I was finding that approximately 10 to 12% had served in the military. And then another one of those questions that I asked, had to do with brain injury, I was always fascinated with brains. You said, I knew folks with traumatic brain injury, and I asked a simple question and it was, have you ever been in a position where you've been knocked unconscious with either a baseball bat or you are simply, has your kid ever gone through a car windshield? And I was absolutely surprised by the number of individuals that had served in the military and also had a traumatic brain injury. So that kind of piqued my interest. And then after working in the prison and jail system for many years, I went to the Rhode Island Judiciary and I worked in pretrial services and they wanted to stop their first Veteran's treatment co-op program. And so I was the guy to actually begin doing that and thinking about my experiences working in the prison system in that brain injury question always came back to me somehow. I really was very fueled by that. I worked as a program coordinator for the Rhode Island Veterans Treatment Court Program for several years. And then I was also doing consulting work for Justice For Vets. And eventually a position, a full-time position became open to Justice For Vets. And so I applied for the position and I've been in this current role since 2018.

DUANE: And I think it's very interesting, especially having your own military background, your own deployments. As you said, I think I got my first concussion at Fort Bragg in the late nineties. It was one of those rights of passage. If you didn't get your bell rung, then you weren't welcomed by the 82nd airborne division.

But I think at that time in the late nineties, just starting to understand, but especially with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were really starting to understand that the survivability led to greater traumatic brain injuries in catastrophic, wounded, ill, and injured. It's interesting that your military experience and your personal experience and your clinical experience came to a head while also being involved in the criminal justice system.

SCOTT: And that's a strange story too. The majority of my entire career was spent Duane in the Rhode Island National Guard. I volunteered, for one deployment, which was more than enough for me, to Afghanistan in 2003 to 2004. And I was a mental health clinician. So I went in there completely knowing the issues that could, but of course not knowing until you're exposed to that environment. And I came home myself after several years pos where things started bothering me. And what talking Duane probably about, four years post-deployment. I was able to get some assistance, went to a Vet center, a big advocate of Vet centers fantastic Vet centers. It's interesting how it all came together. Working in the criminal justice system, having my own deployment experiences, coming back to the criminal justice system in a different role, and yes, there, but for the grace of God go I, and you and everyone else.

DUANE: And I think that's one of the things, one of the big things we'll talk about later that Justice For Vets does is provide mentors, for the court system. But I think every mentor that I've ever talked to has said the same thing. Like I'm just one bad decision. I'm just one bad night away from being a participant in these programs, rather than just being someone who's supporting these programs.

SCOTT: Absolutely so true. We, you, and I could have a sidebar conversation about this because we both worked in those programs. That's absolutely true. And again, just to relate my own personal experience. Having the education, having the strong family support, and community support that I had, I was fortunate, but a lot of folks are not fortunate in that regard.

DUANE: And I think you, your understanding that there were resources out there such as the Vet Center same me as well. You know, about a year after I retired, I availed myself of the Vet Center. One of the best things I could have done. My wife suggested I availed myself of the Vet Center, and also had the wherewithal and the desire to reach out, that was another barrier.

I returned from Iraq in 2007 after my first 15-month deployment. And you'd already been to Afghanistan, as you said. I think we started noticing the psychological impact of rapid deployments and knowing that the reasons for misbehavior at that time were not the same as they were in say, 1989. But I still have some people that ask me, why should veterans be given special treatment? They say, why are veterans courts even necessary?

SCOTT: No, I think it's an excellent question. And, we have a population of individuals that are in the criminal justice system that we know what the potential issues can be in. Specifically this particular population around traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic trauma to include military sexual trauma and other invisible wounds.

We have that understanding of what their possible needs are. And we have the big VA. We have in every state, the Department of Veterans Affairs that can provide these services, these interventions for individuals that could possibly have those problems, those issues. I, would argue that we would have a moral obligation to be able to support them if we know what the need is for those individuals. And we have the resources, I really truly believe we have a moral obligation to provide them with those support services. I have seen traditional prosecution. We don't have those insights into those individuals that we have in these treatment courts settings.

And so that is the number one, if not the reason to recognize that if we have individuals that have a diagnosis and we have the interventions to provide assistance for those individuals for those diagnoses. And by God, we have an obligation to provide them with that support.

DUANE: No, I, I completely agree. And for those listeners who may be familiar with Veterans Courts, they were a problem-solving court based on a drug court model, but a lot of these courts are really based on a particular condition, but not a population. In the way, I've always described it is Veterans Courts, all of the problem-solving courts, whether it's substance abuse court, domestic violence court, or a DUI court or a mental health court. But it's much more complicated in the Veteran population because all of those conditions can be present in the same individual.

SCOTT: Yes. You and I both know it. I think the Veteran population or specifically the Justice-Involved Veteran population is one of the most challenging populations to work with. Everything from, we talk about co-occurring disorders or we talk about, alcohol dependence. But this particular population, I think you have multiple morbidities. That's another word they use. Right? I just think it's this population with specifically the multiple chronic conditions that they have, and we have that supports the services to intervene. Why not? Good God.

DUANE: And I think that's the other piece is that. There are so many resources, whether it is in a community setting if you have a large military community or you have the Department of Veterans Affairs, is that there's often this gap between these Veterans that are involved in the justice system. They've been in bad situations, they've in yes, often made bad decisions, for a various number of reasons, but the resources that are there from the Department of Veterans Affairs, many of these Veterans, in my experience and in yours, I assume the same. They just don't avail themselves of that. They don't take advantage of the resources that are out.

SCOTT: Right. And I think, you had indicated before you were a mentor and, sometimes what happens that we find is individuals may feel that. They may be negative about the VA and we always say, if you've only been to one VA you've only been to one VA. And especially today's VA's is so credible because I'm just thinking about their polytrauma system of care they have at the VA. We can't touch that anywhere. So we say, please encourage your participant, your mentee to go to the VA because it's going to be their experience. It's not your experience. Bad or good. It doesn't matter. This is available to them. It's available in every state. I moved from Rhode Island to Tennessee and my VA medical records they'll follow me, which is fantastic. That continuity of care. That's what it's all about.

DUANE: And I think in, in, at the same time, it's a very different VA from Rhode Island to Tennessee, to St. Louis to Colorado. And I think that's one of the things that. in my experience, veterans involved in the criminal justice system life has gotten to them to a point where they don't see beyond what their current problem is.

And the Veteran Courts are there to be able to support them, to maybe pick their head up and help them realize, what you think is going to be bad in the VA. For example, it's not going to be as bad.

SCOTT: That's right. And we see that without, again, going back to my mentor piece, whose responsibility as we teach, in our training, we say the mentor's responsibility to provide hope and moral support. And those sound like two simple things, but they are tremendous, impacts on the individual they are working with. And that support is just, there's nothing quite like that peer to peer. There, as we know, practitioner to the client or, probation to probate, it’s just amazing.

DUANE: And I think that's another unique aspect of Veterans Courts is that peer support model. Veteran Courts call them mentors. But the VA has been involved in this peer support model, that provides a measure of lived experience. And that's you and I, as clinicians who also have military experience have. Then, and we're super peers, so to speak. But that peer support model, is one way that I've seen that's been very beneficial to help individuals who are hesitant to seek mental health care, to get over that.

SCOTT: I think it's one of the pieces that makes the Veteran's Treatment Court Programs so successful. One is having a big VA at the table and the other one is having that peer support network. Absolutely, and like you said, we have mentors in courts, but we're also seeing peer support specialists from the VA, from the community as well now becoming part of our VTCs, which is phenomenal.

DUANE: That is another unique aspect that I really appreciate about Veteran's Courts. When I was involved in, before we started talking, I told you how I was involved in our local Veterans Court. It was an example of multi-disciplinary cooperation. You had state judiciary, you had local nonprofits, you had local community health providers. You had the VA representation at the table in the community. That's another unique aspect is the Veterans justice outreach personnel from local VA's are connected to local Veterans Courts.

SCOTT: Yes, the VJO specialist, where would we be without them? They are absolutely fabulous. They've grown substantially throughout the entire country. And it's just such a critical component to have them. And, speaking of VTCs also the programming, the interventions of Veterans specific, the responses we talk about being, and the clinical side in the criminal genic side. The responsiveness to that population now, even our criminal genic programming is veteran-centric now, that we didn't have in years.

There's two or three companies out there right now that are doing specific criminogenic programming for the Veteran population. So it's not just clinical, it's addressing criminal genic issues as well, which we've seen evolve tremendously over the past two to three.

DUANE: I think that's a great point to my personal mentor, Judge David Shakes, of our local Veterans Court. He says that his Veteran Court participants are very different from who he normally sees as a judge. These Veterans didn't grow up thinking I'm gonna find myself in front of a judge at some point.

It was very much situational and so it's very critical. Not only has the Veteran's Courts come to serve Veterans, but it's also advancing the treatment of Veterans in the Criminal Justice System. It's coming around.

SCOTT: Yes, sir. Absolutely. We see that now. it's clear that.

DUANE: And so this is a lot of what Justice For Vets, your organization does is in supporting courts around the country.

Since Veteran Courts first began in 2008, they've been around for a number of years, but I'm still surprised how many in the Veteran community aren't familiar with Veterans Courts, or they don't really know what they are, or much less, understand what Justice For Vets is as an organization.

SCOTT: I think it is great that this podcast is certainly helping getting that word out. They've grown tremendously. There are an estimated 400 and good gosh, four hundred and twenty-five, four hundred and thirty VTCs across the country which is fabulous.

We provide training at multiple levels. And I'll just give a, shoutout here. But the programming we do is we provide support to, grantees and non-grantees. The majority of our funding comes from the Bureau of Justice. We are so grateful to have them in our court. They are fabulous. They provide us with our financial assistance and we provide two programs out there, foundational trainings, and operational tune-up trainings, which we call refresher trainings, the mentor boot camps, we call them. We also provide mentor coordinator trainings. We have e-learning. On our website, where we have 10 or 15 quick snapshots of mentoring itself and trauma-informed care.

And what that means, we do statewide conferences on clinical topics, as well as criminal genic topics. We do a lot. We've got a lot, not much we don't do out there for the Veterans Treatment Courts that request our assistance or just say, Hey, we'd love to have, up to date, current training on stuff.

All of our trainings are evidence-based as seeped in research. We don't do trainings to say, this is my opinion so listen to me, and this is how it should be. So, everything is rooted in evidence, and we're very, very proud of our trainings as well.

Our website, www.justiceforvets.org, would be a fabulous starting point for anyone that's interested in receiving more training about VTCs.

DUANE: And I think that's, both for individuals wondering is there a Veteran Court in my area? That's a great place to go to be connected to Veterans Courts. But also for those individuals who may say I want one in my area. How do I start one in my area?

Obviously, that is a very local conversation but having Justice For Vets be part of this as it has grown can help communities establish courts or engage with key stakeholders.

SCOTT: Yes, that's what we just asked. Pick up the phone. I'm listed on there. You can give me a telephone call. You can give, I have folks, project directors that are working within training coordinators. We can help, we can absolutely assist with we'll take emails, text messages, phone calls. Our model is we will not rest until there is a Veteran's Treatment Court in reach for every Veteran in need. That's our motto. That's what's on our challenge coin. It's very simple. It's right. To the point. And we mean it.

DUANE: And I think that's a very critical point. Again, I've also been involved in Legislative Advocacy but as you've mentioned, the proliferation of Veteran Courts around the country. It could almost be a matter of a Veteran, violating the law in jurisdiction three miles away in a different jurisdiction and they may not have the same resources, because the different jurisdiction, just over the county line. For example, just over the district line, may not have the same resources as a Veterans Court. So I think it's critical as big as it's become. I absolutely agree, it needs to be bigger.

SCOTT: Yes, yes. And we are seeing regional Veterans Treatment Courts now. And we have seen some of them that have actually crossed the state line, which is very fascinating. We're seeing federal Veterans Treatment Courts which is fantastic.

There's a great one out of Waco, Texas with Judge Mansky. So we've got the federal Veterans Treatment Courts. We're seeing now we're seeing municipal Veterans Treatment Courts at the city level.

Arizona comes to mind, so they have out there one of the trainings we do is we actually talk about how do we get the word out when we do this training with our mentors, as well as our multidisciplinary staff teams. Whether it's a brochure or whether it's a website,5 0 1 C3. But we're seeing more of them and we're seeing more community stakeholders come to the table too, which is also fabulous, whether it's an Elks club or local American Legion.

DUANE: And I think as we see, obviously, as we come out of this period of the longest sustained conflict in United States History, we're coming to the end of, at least this phase of the global war on terror. You and I both know we have another 30, 40 years. The youngest Veteran of the global war on terror just left Afghanistan six months ago.

So we have to serve that young man or woman for the next 50 years, because we've seen what's happened with the Vietnam generation 30, 40, 50 years on down the line. Unfortunately, this is a problem, perhaps like Veteran homelessness, the work that I do around Veteran suicide, that isn't going away anytime soon.

SCOTT: Absolutely. Absolutely not. We're just touching it now.

DUANE: And again, I, as you said, not to get too far afield. I know that I could have conversations and have had many conversations about Veterans Courts for much longer than we have here. So if people do want to find out more about the work that you do, and mentioned your website, but can you give us the website again, maybe some social media that Justice For Vets has where they can find out more.

SCOTT: Sure. So our website is simply www.justiceforvets.org. Our official Twitter handle is justice4vets. Our official Facebook, JusticeForVets.

DUANE: And we'll make sure that all of those are in the show notes. Scott, it was really great to be able to have you come on the show.

SCOTT: Oh, so nice meeting you Duane. Thank you for all the fabulous work you do to get this word out and the podcast is fabulous. I've checked out a couple already, so I'm looking forward to future ones.

DUANE: Absolutely appreciate it.

Once again, we would like to thank this week's sponsor, PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. You can find more about www.psycharmor.org.

A Veterans spent last night in jail. That's going to be true when I record this and it's going to be true when you listen to it, whether you hear this in the day that it comes out or five years later, and there’s probably a lot of Veterans for a number of different reasons. You heard Scott say that when he was working in the jail system, that's initial incarceration first getting arrested, things like that.

About 10 to 15% of the people being booked in the facility, had served in the military. That's five or six Veterans a night. 40 Veterans a week. In one jurisdiction in Rhode Island those numbers add up and they add up quickly.

And if you served in the military, chances are that someone you served with someone that you trusted, found themselves sitting in the back of a cop car at some point. The reasons for this are complicated and various, it's not very sensitive of me, but I've often said that you have criminals who happen to be Veterans and you have Veterans who happen to commit crimes.

You have those who served in the military, who simply behave in think in criminogenic ways they don't follow the law. They don't necessarily respect the rights of others. They think in such a way that leads them to engage in criminal acts. We know who they are, we served with them. And when we hear later that they found themselves in front of a judge somewhere, we may be surprised, but not really. Then we have those Veterans who are total surprised when we hear about it. That they were the last person that we would think of that would do something like that, whatever that is. And the fact is that we need to support both of these Veterans And that's where Veteran Courts come in. Again, as I said in the interview, I've heard some Veterans say that they don't believe that Veterans in the Criminal Justice System should get special privileges.

I've also heard this from non-Veterans who work in the Criminal Justice System that if we give special consideration to Veterans that we should do so for other populations, first responders, for example, or foster children. But Scott makes the point here that two of the difference for this particular population is that one, we know some of the primary causes of justice involvement for Veterans exposure, to trauma, both physical and psychological, moral injury, which is when our military experiences cause what we believe to be right and wrong to be shifted in both large and small ways.

The other thing is Scott points out is that there are resources to address these known causes. Both at the federal level to the Department of Veterans Affairs and often at the local level. So if you're not familiar with Veteran Courts, I suggest you look up Justice For Vets, learn more about them and see if there's a court in a jurisdiction near you 'cause you never know when it might come in handy.

Another thing that I'd like to bring up is Scott's description of the goal of Veteran mentors. We didn't go very deep into it on the show but one part of each Veteran Court Program is the element of peer support. Those who served in the military were part of the program to assist justice-involved Veterans.

This is often seen as a key element of a Veteran Court. The program may or may not be successful because it has Veteran mentors involved, but it's certainly not going to be successful if it doesn't have them involved. Every Veteran knows that trust is huge. And just having served in the military, establishes trust with others who have done. Even if it's only for a minute, and a minute may be all it takes to help someone recover from some significantly poor life choices. Scott mentioned that they tell their mentors that their whole purpose is to provide hope and moral support for Veteran Court Participants. Hope that things can be better than they are any different than they were and moral support that know that when mistakes are made and they often are especially for Veterans in a recovery program like Veteran Court. Then the Veteran is not garbage. They're not going to be written off. They're not going to be tossed out.

Hope and moral support. That's what Veterans have been given each other since Valley Forge. It's what got them through the wilderness campaign and the Battle of the Bulge. From the Jungles of Vietnam to the Deserts of Iraq and the Mountains of Afghanistan. Service members have been supporting each other through the roughest patches, the worst moments, the darkest nights.

It's one of the things that forge the bond that Veterans have, it forms the core of the military ethos. Never leave anyone behind you. Don't baby them. You don't make excuses for the behavior, but you don't leave them. Ever. And for justice-involved Veterans, maybe that support is the thing that helped them through. And once they lost that support, they couldn't fight it in other ways. They didn't have a support system like me and Scott or access to, or awareness of resources, like the Vet Centers of the VA.

They lost that hope that things could be better and the fundamental judgment or condemnation rather than moral support, hope and nonjudgmentalness is a powerful thing, my friends, and we have all been beneficiaries of them. It's great to know that Justice For Vets is supporting those who have served and may have lost the power of hope and moral support.

Check out Justice For Vets because they can use your help. But more importantly, it's possible that someone that you know could probably use theirs.

For this week's PsychArmor resource of the week, I'd like to share the series of PsychArmor courses on military culture. And the cornerstone PsychArmor course, 15 things Veterans Want You To Know. Working with Veterans as a community member and basic information about how to communicate with Veterans who are disabled or trauma-exposed. These courses are designed to help you understand and interact with Veterans more effectively so that you can provide whatever support that they need. You can access this core series through a link in our show notes.

So thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. Make sure to take a look at the show notes, which you can find in your podcast player of choice as well www.psycharmor.org/podcast.