County jail, vet groups fast-track help to incarcerated veterans

Warren County, Ky. Regional Jail is working with veterans organizations to cut down obstacles for incarcerated veterans to access healthcare, housing, education and disability assistance upon release, with the aim of reducing recidivism. Research suggests that those who recently served in the military are twice as likely as non-veterans to face incarceration, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.

Volunteers from the local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post go into the county jail once a month — switching off each time among the jail’s four sections (specialized housing, general population, female and protective custody) — to provide veterans with information on a variety of resources available to them, and give them an opportunity to get a head start on the documentation process so they can access them when they’re released. 

“It just totally makes sense” to bring veterans into the jail to educate incarcerated veterans on what resources will be available to them upon release, said Captain Douglas Miles, Warren County Regional Jail’s reentry services coordinator.

“They signed up to protect us for our freedoms, our rights,” Miles said. “And when they are done with [serving time], veterans — along with anybody that’s in our country — deserve the right to be healed and helped so they can come back into our communities and be successful.”

VFW Post 1298 worked with the jail to get the National Personnel Records Center phone number “whitelisted” through its system, meaning inmates are now able to request records while they’re still incarcerated, speeding up the application process, according to Rob Holdsworth, a VFW representative who is the lead volunteer in the jail’s Veterans Justice Outreach Program (a program that shares the same name with a program at the federal level). 

“One of the things I tell them, is ‘You’ve obviously got plenty of time — that’s the one thing you’ve got, is time,” Holdsworth said. “‘So read this packet. Think about where you were, what you did, because everything in the VA, they’re going to ask you, you’re claiming service-connected disability for this injury, show me a record that says that you were in this place, at this time, doing this work, when you were injured.’”

“Anything with the government comes down to documentation, so we try to help them track down the documentation and fill out the paperwork.”

Keeping track of all of the different veterans organizations and what they do and what their contact information is — particularly without access to a phone or computer — can be a challenge, so the VFW is there to help aid the process along, Holdsworth said. 

“Unfortunately, a lot of guys, when they get out of jail, they may be homeless, they may have no income, and they go right back to jail,” Holdsworth said. “So, we try to connect them to [Veterans Affairs] resources to hopefully help them put jail behind them for good.”

Representatives from the Veterans Upward Bound program also come into the jail to share what post-secondary education opportunities veterans can leverage upon release.

Travis Slusher, an inmate at Warren County Regional Jail, started going to the Veterans Justice Outreach meetings last year to learn more about the resources available to him. The meetings have helped him access information on housing and employment, and educated him on the processes of filing disability claims and getting his pension reinstated. It’s also been a positive experience for him to build a sense of community with other veterans, Slusher added.

“You share a common bond with people that served,” Slusher said. “It’s helpful and it’s nice just to get out of the cell, and be able to speak with people who are going through or have some of the same issues that you have, and try to come up with a resolution or find things that are available to us.”

Slusher’s currently incarcerated for a probation violation related to a drug possession charge, and is set to be released next month from Warren County Regional Jail, after serving time for roughly a year. He said the VFW meetings have helped give him the “tools to be successful” once he’s released and his top priority is finding housing.

Research shows that many of the reasons veterans disproportionately face incarceration compared to civilians stem from health conditions from serving, including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and substance use disorder.

“I’ve talked to guys — one guy was an Afghanistan veteran who was telling me some war stories, and it led me to believe that he may have experienced some traumatic stuff when he was deployed, and then perhaps maybe had a TBI (traumatic brain injury), came back to the states, got out, and then he ended up in a motorcycle gang and got himself sentenced to prison,” Holdsworth said. 

“And I can’t help but wonder if part of his mental problem, whatever it is, doesn’t go back to traumatic experiences that he experienced in service, and if we had been able to provide him more and better services when needed, maybe he might have avoided jail, I don’t know.”

Another veteran, who suffered injuries in a helicopter crash in Kuwait while serving, shared with Holdsworth that he thought his substance issues stemmed from dealing with both the physical and mental effects of the injuries. 

“Now that may or may not be,” Holdsworth said. “He’s one who’s been in and out of jail so many times, so I feel like he’s had ample opportunity to access [Veterans Affairs] services, but it’s a bureaucratic process, so people can lose patience with that and just go get some illicit substances to self-medicate.

“I had somebody here locally that was maybe being a little derogatory toward some of our folks needing so much help, and I try to remind them, not everybody went to West Point, not everybody used their G.I. Bill to go to college. Some folks struggle, and those are the folks that we’re trying to help out.”

Many people who are incarcerated don’t know what to do when they get out, and the Veterans Justice Outreach Program simply helps veterans take advantage of the resources they’re offered, Miles said. 

“When we look at our veterans, active or inactive, I think everybody has a certain pride with them, and we want them to be successful,” Miles said. “It just makes sense to help them, like they’ve helped us, and there are resources available to them that are out there, and they don’t have knowledge of it.

“To just navigate them toward resources that are there for them, that’s a huge blessing. Instead of just sitting here warehousing people and waiting for their time to be done — why not try to make their time here be as productive as possible by teaching them how things should be and [connecting them to] people out there that could help them when they get out?”