Pick Your Battles: The Legalization of Treatment in a Veterans Treatment Court

• In Event: Exploring the Veterans Treatment Court Experience: Collateral Consequences, Treatment Satisfaction, Procedural Justice, and Legitimacy

Abstract

Recognizing that criminal behavior stems from multiple loci, a unique form of specialty courts called Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) utilize a therapeutic approach to simultaneously treat PTSD from combat trauma, substance abuse issues, and criminality. While criminal justice research often uses recidivism rates to measure success for a program this presentation focuses on an earlier temporal turning point: a participant’s decision to change while in the VTC program. That is, this presentation explores what contributes to a participant’s decision to change and how participants decide when and why to comply with the VTC program. After conducting nonparticipant observation at a Southern California VTC for over two years and in-depth interviews with twenty-two participants of the court, this presentation will illuminate one aspect of the court that contributes to participant decisions to change: the utility of treatment and the therapeutic jurisprudential principles the court employs.

Author

• Nicole Sherman, California State University, Chico