A veteran’s PTSD doesn’t disappear when they enter prison. Traumatic brain injuries don’t cure themselves. Addiction doesn’t vanish behind bars. Yet many of the systems designed to help veterans manage those conditions stop at the prison gate.
When veterans are incarcerated, they often lose access to VA healthcare, struggle to use education benefits and face major cuts to disability compensation. The problem is not eligibility. The problem is continuity.
Most discussions about incarcerated veterans focus on what happens after release. How do we help them find housing? How do we reconnect them to treatment? How do we reduce recidivism?
Those are important questions. But they ignore a more basic one: Why are we waiting until release to reconnect veterans to services they were already receiving before incarceration?
Veterans in the criminal justice system often struggle with PTSD, addiction, trauma and other serious chronic health conditions. They also face a higher risk of opioid overdose and suicide than veterans who have never been involved with the legal system. Yet many lose access to the VA care that was helping them before they entered prison.