This article examines perceptions of justice and how they interact with factors which are known to impact risk for PTS and criminal justice involvement among military veterans; it begins with a literature review on PTSD risk and protective factors, and continues to provide a summary of the research study and its guiding questions, a discussion of the research methodology, missing and problematic data, sample characteristics, data analysis, results, and key findings, limitations, and research implications.
This article reports on an explorative study that examined how perceptions of justice interact with factors that are known to impact risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as criminal justice involvement among veterans. The study integrated research on PTSD risk and protective factors, criminogenic risk among veterans, and important theories of justice. The authors emphasize that these constructs are important to examine together because of the fact that risk of PTSD and criminal justice involvement among veterans are shaped by a related set of pre-military, service-related, and post-military factors, and that perceptions of procedural justice and legal legitimacy correlate to legal compliance generally as well as within problem-solving courts. The research presented here serves researchers by mapping out the extension of those theories in veterans treatment courts (VTCs); for VTC practitioners and policymakers, the study findings suggest veteran-specific sociological factors that correspond with increased and decreased trust in the court system; and for clinicians, the study contributes analysis of the links between probable PTSD, criminal behaviors, and perceptions of justice.