Veterans are a significant subpopulation in criminal justice populations, comprising between 9% and 10% of arrestee, jail, prison, and community-supervision populations. In order to address the needs of justice-involved veterans, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Justice Programs (VJP) offer services to veterans at multiple points in their involvement in the criminal justice system. Within the context of the VA's national mandate to develop VJP, this article presents best practice case examples using the Sequential Intercept Model as the intervention frame, and discusses each in context of a community psychology framework for innovation dissemination. The case examples demonstrate how central program guidance is adapted locally to meet the national mandate using strategies that fit the local environment, illustrating the innovations in action orientation, boundary spanning, and flexibility of organizations. This review provides examples of creative reinvention that expand on the mandate and work to meet local needs. To optimize services to veterans released from custody or supervised in the community, future study of the implementation of this national mandate should examine all VJP sites to identify the full range of best practices in local program implementation.

Background In the criminal justice system, special populations, such as older adults or patients with infectious diseases, have been identified as particularly vulnerable to poor health outcomes. Military veterans involved in the criminal justice system are also a vulnerable population warranting attention because of their unique healthcare needs. This review aims to provide an overview of existing literature on justice-involved veterans’ health and healthcare to identify research gaps and inform policy and practice. Methods A systematic search was conducted to identify research articles related to justice-involved veterans’ health and healthcare that were published prior to December 2017. Study characteristics including healthcare category, study design, sample size, and funding source were extracted and summarized with the aim of providing an overview of extant literature. Results The search strategy initially identified 1830 unique abstracts with 1387 abstracts then excluded. Full-text review of 443 articles was conducted with 252 excluded. There were 191 articles included, most related to veterans’ mental health (130/191, 68%) or homelessness (24/191, 13%). Most studies used an observational design (173/191, 91%). Conclusions Knowledge gaps identified from the review provide guidance on future areas of research. Studies on different sociodemographic groups, medical conditions, and the management of multiple conditions and psychosocial challenges are needed. Developing and testing interventions, especially randomized trials, to address justice-involved veterans care needs will help to improve their health and healthcare. Finally, an integrated conceptual framework that draws from diverse disciplines, such as criminology, health services, psychology, and implementation science is needed to inform research, policy and practice focused on justice-involved veterans. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s40352-019-0086-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Targeted efforts to improve receipt of pharmacotherapy for opioid use disorder among veterans exiting prison is needed as they have lower odds of receiving these medications.

The Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO) program of the U.S. Veterans Health Administration has a primary mission of linking military veterans in jails, courts, or in contact with law enforcement to mental health and substance use disorder treatment. National data of veterans with VJO contact were used to describe demographic characteristics, and mental health and substance use disorder diagnoses and treatment use and test correlates of treatment entry and engagement using multi-level logistic regression models. Of the 37,542 VJO veterans, treatment entry was associated with being homeless and having a mental health disorder or both a mental health and a substance use disorder versus a substance use disorder only. Being American Indian/Alaskan Native was associated with lower odds of treatment entry. Engagement was associated with female gender, older age, Asian race, urban residence, and homeless status. Increased utilization of substance use disorder treatment, especially pharmacotherapy, is an important quality improvement target.