CAREER: The Instrumentalization of Law Through Veterans Treatment Courts

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Beginning in 2008, Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) emerged as one response to a growing concern that veterans are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system and have unique, unmet, needs. Each of the more than 500 VTCs around the country seeks to connect qualifying veterans with substance use and mental health services. This project examines why these courts have emerged and how they operate. Researchers examine the origins and practices of three distinct VTCs, one in Florida, California, and Massachusetts. Each address different community needs, with different rules related to participation, legal outcomes, and treatment plans. This project involves veteran students from different academic institutions in research focusing on how these courts seek to aid a uniquely vulnerable population.By examining the purpose and practice of VTCs, the project addresses why and how local legal innovations emerge to address entrenched social and political problems such as drug use, mental health disorders, poverty and war. Further, the research addresses how these innovations integrate logics from disparate institutional fields related to medicine, criminal justice, and social welfare. Finally, the analysis will reveal how authorities encourage compliance in legal institutions with contradictory goals related to punishment and rehabilitation. The project involves team-based, comparative, ethnographic analysis, including long-term observation of court hearings, interviews with VTC founders and personnel working locally and nationally, and the collection of legislative histories and institutional documents that explain the purpose and practice of each VTC, as well as national level initiatives to promote VTCs. Researchers use a grounded theory approach to analyze the data, drawing on theories related to therapeutic jurisprudence, procedural justice, and social welfare decision-making to explain why these courts are being created and how they fulfill their goals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.