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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Brown County, WI, Considering 'Veterans Courts' |
| 2011-10-31 |
| Judges are trying to establish special courts for military veterans, with an emphasis on treatment instead of incarceration for veterans experiencing mental health care problems. Police, prosecutors and the VA would help forwarding such cases out of the regular court system into these special courts. The veterans court idea could eventually become regional and spread to other counties. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #3 My guess would be a monster. It's that old "one law for everybody" thing again. I occasionally go to a PTSD group at the VA in Baltimore. When I first started going I was surprised at the number of guys who were ex-druggies or had spent time in prison or both. I still find this indecent. They deserved better because they gave so much. Since the majority are Vietnam vets I saw them give it. But (as virtually all of them would admit) it was always individual choice that got them in trouble with the law. The ghosts and the anger and the overreactions and the inappropriate responses were connected to the trauma, but are only a part of an overall matrix of life and behavior. When your life is stable your mind stabilizes. Most people don't hop off the deep end when they're getting married but when they're getting divorced. I'm all in favor of continuing to improve the VA. It's 1000 percent better now than it was in my Dad's time. Its case management system right now is better than Walter Reed's, and except for a few overworked primary care doctors I've never felt like I was taking up valuable time for my unimportant problems. But the biggest problem is always that the vet has to come to them. Once enrolled in the system they're great, but if you're not enrolled you don't exist and if you drop out you've ceased to exist. That's what should be a social work problem, but the Marxist theory taught in today's schools of social work doesn't seem to cover how to solve it, so I guess the social workers aren't up to fixing the problem. |
| Posted by: Fred 2011-10-31 10:30 |
| #2 Wonder what Heinlein would say. |
| Posted by: gr(o)mgoru 2011-10-31 10:26 |
| #1 This could be good, or it could be corrupted into a monster. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-10-31 09:39 |