CAREER: The Instrumentalization of Law Through Veterans Treatment Courts

从2008年开始，退伍军人待遇法庭（VTCs）的出现，是对退伍军人在刑事司法系统中不成比例的代表以及独特的、未得到满足的需求日益关注的一种回应。全国500多个职业培训中心中的每一个都试图将合格的退伍军人与药物使用和心理健康服务联系起来。本项目探讨了这些法院出现的原因及其运作方式。研究人员考察了三个不同的职业培训中心的起源和实践，分别位于佛罗里达州、加利福尼亚州和马萨诸塞州。每一项都针对不同的社区需求，在参与、法律结果和治疗计划方面有不同的规则。该项目涉及来自不同学术机构的资深学生，研究重点是这些法院如何寻求帮助一个独特的弱势群体。通过研究职业培训中心的目的和做法，该项目探讨了本地法律创新为何以及如何出现，以解决吸毒、精神健康障碍、贫困和战争等根深蒂固的社会和政治问题。此外，该研究还探讨了这些创新如何整合与医学、刑事司法和社会福利相关的不同制度领域的逻辑。最后，分析将揭示当局如何鼓励与惩罚和改造相关的矛盾目标的法律机构遵守。该项目以团队为基础，进行比较和民族分析，包括长期观察法庭听证会，采访职业训练局创始人和在本地和全国工作的人员，收集立法历史和机构文件，解释每个职业训练局的宗旨和做法，以及国家层面推广职业训练局的举措。研究人员使用扎根的理论方法来分析数据，利用与治疗法学、程序正义和社会福利决策相关的理论来解释为什么要创建这些法院以及它们如何实现目标。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.