RETIRED JUSTICE EVELYN LUNDBERG STRATTON'S VETERANS' CRIMINAL JUSTICE & MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES NEWS January 9, 2016 Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, Retired Veterans in the Courts Initiative Evelyn Lundberg Stratton retired from the Ohio Supreme Court at the end of 2012 so as to pursue more fully criminal justice reforms with a particular emphasis on veterans who become involved with the justice system. She established the Veterans in the Courts Initiative in 2009. Video http://bit.ly/1glCXZ0 Subscribe to this free weekly, all volunteer-generated, news summary by joining our Veterans in The Courts Initiative Group Nationwide, 3,072 providers of veterans’ services, just like you, receive this newsletter directly. Thank you for sharing! VETERANS IN THE COURTS INITIATIVE estrattonconsulting.wordpress.com Editor's Note: To refocus this newsletter on veterans-related criminal justice and mental illness issues and to shorten it to a more manageable size, we have moved our tables & lists of reference materials and other longer term information to retired Justice Stratton's blog. Please follow the links below. Operation Legal Help Ohio National Legal Assistance VA Town Halls & Events http://bit.ly/1Gg0HbK http://bit.ly/19DC5zu http://bit.ly/1Gg1DN6 Events: Conferences, Webinars, Jobs & Hiring Fairs Listings Additional Resources etc. http://bit.ly/19Dz2ay http://bit.ly/1Gg21LH http://bit.ly/1Gg1nOi Current Newsletter 2015 Newsletters Ohio Resources For Veterans http://bit.ly/19ovER5 http://bit.ly/1FKASAC http://bit.ly/19ouWn0 This data will be updated constantly. Please use the links below to share the information. Please send us new sources when you find them. Thank you! Editor's Note: Thank you to all of the individuals and organizations that provide articles for these news clips every week. I would especially like to thank and urge you to follow: Mary Ellen Salzano, founder facilitator of the CA Statewide Collaborative for our Military and Families, Dr. Ingrid Herrera-Yee, NAMI Military & Veterans Policy, Dr. Herrera-Yee is currently a Board Member for the Association of the United States Army (AUSA), Military Spouses of Strength, Military Mental Health Project and the National Guard Suicide and Resiliency Council among others. She has also been a special contributor to NBC News, Military Times, Air Force Times, Military Spouse Magazine and BuzzFeed. She spends her free time mentoring spouses through eMentor and Joining Forces. Dr. Herrera-Yee received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and was a Clinical Fellow at Harvard University. Lily Casura, journalist, author and founder of Healing Combat Trauma - the award- winning, first website to address the issue of combat veterans and PTSD (established February 2006), and Kelly Kennedy, author and former national health policy, congress and veterans issues reporter (USA Today, Army Times, Chicago Tribune Media Group and USMC 1stLt Andrew T. Bolla, PIO at the USMC Wounded Warrior Regiment, publisher of WWR In the News, DoD Morning News of Note and USA Colonel (Ret.) James Hutton, Director of Media Relations at the Department of Veterans Affairs. FEATURED STORIES VA needs skilled healthcare leaders to speed system reforms (Dr. David J. Shulkin is undersecretary for health at the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department) http://bit.ly/1nbqdLV . The recent challenges in the VA healthcare system have received much attention. Among the most daunting is the shortage of healthcare professionals in the Veterans Health Administration. We have nearly 41,000 vacancies—close to 1 in 6 positions are unfilled. 1 of 33 With so many vacant positions, it's difficult to fix our access issues and continue to make the progress needed in other areas. To effectively tackle the issues facing the VHA, we must start by identifying and hiring more of the right leaders. We currently have executive openings at approximately 25% of our medical centers and regional networks. Research: PEOPLE WITH UNTREATED MENTAL ILLNESS 16 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE KILLED BY POLICE http://bit.ly/1OYD2PP People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement, according to a new study released today by the Treatment Advocacy Center. Numbering fewer than 1 in 50 U.S. adults, individuals with untreated severe mental illness are involved in at least 1 in 4 and as many as half of all fatal police shootings, the study reports. Because of this prevalence, reducing encounters between on-duty law enforcement and individuals with the most severe psychiatric diseases may represent the single most immediate, practical strategy for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States, the authors conclude. “By dismantling the mental illness treatment system, we have turned mental health crisis from a medical issue into a police matter,” said John Snook, executive director and a co- author of the study. “This is patently unfair, illogical and is proving harmful both to the individual in desperate need of care and the officer who is forced to respond.” The report, “Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters,” urges lawmakers to reduce loss of life and the many social costs associated with police shootings by enacting public policies that will: Restore the mental health system so that individuals with severe mental illness are not left to deteriorate until their actions provoke a police response; Fund reliable federal tracking and reporting of all incidents involving the use of deadly force by law enforcement, whether lethal or not; and Assure that the role of mental illness in fatal police shootings is identified and reported in government data collection. Defense officials propose biggest UCMJ changes in decades http://is.gd/cfqkMH . After a two-year review, the Defense Department is asking Congress to change dozens of articles governing how troops are tried and punished for misconduct. If approved, it would mark the most far-reaching changes to the UCMJ since its inception in 1950. In a line-by-line review of military laws, top Pentagon lawyers sought to make the military justice system more closely resemble the civilian judicial system. Article 120, which covers rape and sexual assault, should be rewritten to match the definition used in federal civilian courts, under another of the recommendations. A key piece of the Pentagon’s new recommendations calls for making most documents — charge sheets, motions, judge’s rulings — available online, similar to the civilian federal court system. Duane Williams (IAVA: The judicial empowerment could be an interim step to better control pre-trial deals that lessen the risk for sex offenders. The actual solution to that relates to decisions to prosecute, and that would remain a command function under the proposed changes. Research: Visible Brain Damage Detected in MTBI From Blast Injuries http://bit.ly/1UFtH3Z 2 of 33 Many military personnel who experience blast-related traumatic brain injury (MTBI) have lasting brain damage as seen by MRI, according to a study published in Radiology. Researchers from the National Capital Neuroimaging Consortium, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, MD, sought to describe initial neuroradiology findings among members of the military service who had experienced a primary chronic mild TBI (MTBI) caused by a blast. “We were really surprised to see so much damage to the brain in the MTBI patients,” Gerard Riedy, MD, PhD, National Intrepid Center of Excellence at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, said in a release. “It’s expected that people with MTBI should have normal MRI results, yet more than 50 percent had these abnormalities.” Riedy, also noted that these findings represent the first in a series of new studies on advanced brain imaging in patients with MTBI. “This paper is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “We have several more papers coming up that build on these findings and look at brain function, brain wiring, connectivity and perfusion, or brain blood flow.” Event: CIT International Conference, Chicago, April 25th-27th http://citconferences.org/ Featured speakers include Patrick Kennedy, Ken Duckworth (NAMI National), and The Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Civil Division Head Vanita Gupta. CIT International is a non-profit membership organization whose primary purpose is to facilitate understanding, development and implementation of Crisis Intervention Team CIT programs throughout the United States and in other nations worldwide in order to promote and support collaborative efforts to create and sustain more effective interactions among law enforcement, mental health care providers, individuals with mental illness, their families and communities and also to reduce the stigma of mental illness. Event: Veterans Health Administration. VA Healthcare 2016 Conference, Washington, DC, May 16-18, 2016 http://www.veteransaffairshealthcare.com/ The medical care requirements of our veterans have evolved due to the influx of military operations experienced by the United States throughout the past few decades. While once daunting, meeting these requirements are now feasible as a result of the many advancements across the Veterans Health Administration. VA Healthcare 2016 will