Key Element Two

Key Element One details a pathway for veterans to be diverted from incarceration toward treatment and supervision, along with incentives encouraging them to complete their programs successfully. Building on those pathways, Key Element Two describes the components of this treatment and supervision, ensuring that they build on best practices in analogous problem-solving courts and community supervision. Drawing on this evidence base with respect to elements that are most important to aiding veterans, programs should provide treatment tailored to addressing the specific issues veterans face, create individualized case plans with clear goals for successful completion, allow judicial discretion, permit veterans to complete programs in their county of residence, and involve the veteran, their families, and victims and survivors in the process. Each of these components is spelled out in greater detail below.

Evidence-based Treatment

Advances in medicine have generated sophisticated treatments that are uniquely designed to help veterans, such as dialectical behavior therapy.1 Systematic reviews consistently show the benefit of these treatments, with VA facilities outperforming non-VA facilities on various measures, including mortality, quality and safety of care, patient experience, and medication management.2,3,4 These findings are consistent with research indicating that non-VA providers are often poorly trained in evidence-based care for veterans' issues, such as using Cognitive Processing Therapy to treat PTSD.5 These findings underscore the importance of keeping veterans in their community so that they can access these tailored treatments while on probation, rather than being denied access to VA care while incarcerated.6

Clear and Well-Communicated Guidelines

Studies also show that problem-solving courts produce better outcomes when clear and coordinated strategies and goals are communicated in advance to participants. A national study of 23 drug courts found that providing written guidelines with predictable sanctions for drug use and other violations of program rules reduced the number of future crimes committed by participants and reduced substance abuse.7 Similarly, an evaluation of 86 drug courts across New York state indicated that the certainty of sanctions significantly improved three-year rearrest rates,8 and an additional analysis of 69 drug courts found that courts providing quick and accurate communication about sanctions and incentives produced 119% greater reductions in recidivism.9 Drug courts that provided all participants a written copy of the sanction guidelines also saw 72% greater savings in costs associated with their reductions in recidivism compared to courts that did not provide written guidelines.9 Taken together, these findings support a supervision approach emphasizing the achievement of goals that encourage prosocial behaviors and economic stability, in contrast with an approach that defines success as simply serving a specified length of time.10

Individualized Case Plans

While guidelines must be clearly communicated, research also shows that it is necessary to balance this predictability with the ability to modify sanctions and incentives based on the facts and circumstances of individual cases. Two multi-site drug court studies found superior outcomes when judges could exercise discretion and adjust plans based on the response of individuals to their treatment.11,9 Notably, this discretion should not be widely shared but instead concentrated among judges. Best practices research from All Rise notes that “due process and judicial ethics require judges to exercise independent discretion when resolving factual controversies, administering sanctions or incentives that affect a participant’s fundamental liberty interests, or ordering the conditions of supervision.”12