PROGRESS UPDATE

Fall 2024

In August 2022, the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) launched the Veterans Justice Commission, a multi-year research, policy development, and communications project that documents and raises awareness of the unique challenges facing veterans in the civilian justice system and builds consensus for evidence-based reforms that enhance safety, health, and justice.

The Commission is an unprecedented group of senior military and criminal justice leaders and public servants with the experience and expertise crucial to diagnosing systemic challenges and developing feasible solutions. Chaired by former U.S. Defense Secretary, U.S. Senator and decorated combat veteran Chuck Hagel, the Commission also includes former U.S. Defense Secretary and White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, a former Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, and two formerly incarcerated veterans. Between the Commission and its subgroups, more than 50 criminal justice and military leaders directly participate in the Commission’s work.

With the release of its third report in October 2024, the Commission has generated three sets of evidence-based recommendations for policy and practice, a model policy framework for diverting veterans from prosecution and incarceration, and research shedding light on veteran identification, racial disparities in justice involvement, suicide, health care, and other critical topics.

Corrections and Reentry Report

The Commission’s third phase of work examined the challenges facing veterans during incarceration and reentry. “From Confinement to Community: Supporting Successful Veteran Reentry” summarizes the commission’s findings and proposes a series of actions to better support veterans behind bars and as they return to their families and communities.

  • Recommendation 1: Prioritize the recruiting and hiring of justice-involved veterans
  • Recommendation 2: Identify veterans in the justice system and provide VA healthcare to incarcerated veterans
  • Recommendation 3: Eliminate administrative barriers to housing eligibility and prevent benefit arrearages
  • Recommendation 4: Evaluate and develop best practices for veterans housing units
  • Recommendation 5: Create “second look” review processes that recognize military service

Read the full report here.

California Commission Meeting

In August 2024, the commission gathered for two days in California, beginning with a meeting graciously hosted by LinkedIn at its campus in Sunnyvale. The commissioners traveled to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, where they met with a large group of incarcerated veterans, including members of Veterans Healing Veterans From the Inside Out, a peer support and mentoring group founded by commission member Ronald Self. Some of the men shared stories about the lack of support they received as they transitioned from the military to civilian society, and their struggle to find jobs, obtain veterans benefits, and reintegrate with family while coping with combat-related trauma.

Commission Director Jim D. Seward said the San Quentin visit provided a vivid illustration of the problems the panel is working to address: “Too many veterans are ending up in our criminal justice system, and while they must be held accountable for their behavior, our country has a responsibility to honor their service and help them address the factors that often drive them to break the law.”

New Research on PTSD Biomarkers

The Commission released a report highlighting research that could improve the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD. PTSD rates are disproportionately high among military veterans, with as many as one third of former service members experiencing the disorder. Exposure to trauma during deployment, combined with increased incidence of mental health and substance use disorders, elevate the risk for veterans to become justice-involved. Biomarkers, which are objective and quantifiable measures of biological processes, offer a new way to diagnose PTSD, potentially reducing reliance on veterans to self-report their symptoms. Such reliance fuels clinical disagreement over who is experiencing PTSD and who is not. More research is needed to identify clinically actionable biomarkers for PTSD. Once that occurs, however, biomarkers could enable clinicians to identify high-risk individuals, develop prevention strategies, and produce more tailored treatment plans. The report was produced for the Commission by Soonjo Hwang, who specializes in neuroscience, neuroimaging, and phenotyping of various psychopathologies at the University of Nebraska Medical Center Department of Psychiatry.

Outreach to States

National Conference of State Legislatures

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) invited Commission Director Jim Seward to present at their annual summit in Louisville, KY. The event attracts several thousand lawmakers from around the country each year.

Jim presented on the Commission’s work and the model policy framework at the Military and Veterans Affairs Taskforce meeting and at the summit’s session on Innovative Policies for Veterans. NCSL recently published a policy brief on the challenges justice-involved veterans face as well as key elements of the Commission’s model policy framework.

You can view Jim’s presentation at the NCSL Summit here: “Innovative Policies for Veterans” and read a summary of the event and Jim’s comments here: “How the Justice System can Support Military Veterans.”

Looking Forward

The Commission staff continues to share the panel’s findings and recommendations across the country, with a special emphasis on the Model Policy Framework. A roadmap that complements Veterans Treatment Courts, the policy framework allows states to hold veterans accountable while ensuring they receive treatment for the service-related trauma that often underlies their criminal offending. Over the past several months, staff has briefed leaders in 15 states on the policy framework.

In Washington, Senate and House leaders are planning a hearing for November 2024 to highlight veterans’ justice issues and the Commission’s recommendations. Several Veteran Service Organizations will join the hearing, including the VFW, Military Officers Association of America, Student Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, and the Vietnam Veterans of America.

As we look to 2025 and beyond, the Veterans Justice Commission’s priority is an aggressive phase of dissemination to educate stakeholders and amplify its research, findings, and recommendations. Through established channels with leaders in the field and other outreach, the Council will vigorously disseminate the Commission’s findings and recommendations to policymakers, business leaders, advocates, media, and other stakeholders across the country.

Specific targeted dissemination activities include:

  • Creating opportunities to educate key stakeholders across the three branches and three levels of government, nationally and in strategically selected states
  • Presenting at existing issue-specific events and conferences
  • Engaging with the media via interviews, op-eds, and commentary to spark and inform dialogue, prioritizing op-eds and other communications from Commission leadership and members in major national and regional news outlets
  • Curating live web events highlighting key findings and recommendations
  • Generating and distributing a steady stream of digital content across CCJ’s social media channels
  • Repurposing and repackaging research findings to be accessible to key audiences
  • Promoting the findings to the Council membership, which consists of 300 of the nation’s top criminal justice leaders, influencers, and innovators, and to our extensive network of partner organizations.

National Center on Veterans Justice

There is a lack of coordination between programs for justice-involved veterans, which results in the duplication of efforts, a lack of proper program evaluation, and an inability to effectively share what works. As a result, justice-involved veterans seeking assistance often confront a confusing and disjointed network of untested interventions. The VJC recommended the establishment of a National Center for Veterans Justice to lead a coordinated effort to identify and replicate best practices that can improve outcomes for veterans in the criminal justice system. This clearinghouse for data and best practices will lead the effort in revising how our nation manages the men and women who have worn the uniform and now find themselves involved in the justice system. This entity would focus on the transition from the military and potential first contact with law enforcement to reentry from corrections and Second Chance employment.

As efforts morph from research and policy development to a heavier emphasis on implementation, it becomes appropriate for this work to spin out of CCJ and become an independent entity. In the five years since CCJ’s inception, we have spun off two projects in this way: the Violence Reduction Center at the University of Maryland and the freestanding Health and Reentry Project.

We envision the National Center as a public-private partnership, with support from Congress via the Department of Justice and potentially the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs as well.

Raising Public Awareness

The Commission’s work attracted significant media attention. Coverage includes stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, NPR, an Associated Press story appeared in more than 300 outlets, including CBS News, and ABC News. Other major highlights include stories in NBC News, CNN, The Washington Examiner, Governing, The War Horse, Route Fifty, and the Military Times, as well as numerous local network affiliates and major military news sources.

Commission members have authored commentaries for a range of publications, including a piece in USA Today by Chuck Hagel and Eileen Moore highlighting the challenges veterans face upon returning to civilian life, a piece in The Hill from Hagel and Leon Panetta around the 20th anniversary of the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the specific needs of post-9/11 veterans, an op-ed for Military.com by Carla Bugg that underscored the need to better identify veterans at the front end of the justice system, and a piece in Governing by Brock Hunter on how states can better support veterans.

HECTOR MATASCASTILLO served 18 years in the U.S. Army and 13 tours of duty in Iraq, but his most difficult battle happened when he came home. On January 24, 2004, Hector had a dissociative flashback and found himself in a standoff on his front lawn with eight police officers, guns drawn. By the time his criminal case made its way to a Minnesota courtroom, the outcome seemed inevitable. But when the judge learned of Hector's military service, he made a life-changing decision: rather than routing the veteran through the traditional criminal justice system with felony charges, the judge took his service into account and instead issued two years of probation and treatment for PTSD. Today, Hector works proudly as a crisis negotiator for police and is completing his PhD to become a forensic psychologist.

Hector’s story highlights the importance of a new policy framework for justice-involved veterans crafted by CCJ’s Veterans Justice Commission. He was recently honored by the Minnesota Vikings as part of the NFL’s Salute to Service, and the commission's framework has been adopted as a national model by an influential group of state legislators.

Earlier Work

Through research and outreach to veterans service organizations and criminal justice stakeholders, the Commission developed and published comprehensive findings and policy proposals focused on two primary areas: the transition of service members from military to civilian life and the “front end” of the criminal justice system (the stages from arrest through sentencing). Key work includes:

  • A preliminary assessment of the challenges facing veterans in the civilian justice system and a video highlighting the key issues
  • A first set of recommendations that calls for better identification of veterans at the front end of the justice system, increased diversion of veterans away from prosecution and incarceration, and a national center to advance best practices
  • A second set of recommendations that calls for risk assessment, joint transition centers, and other actions to boost transition support for service members.

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