We propose a veteran-centric justice model of resilience training developed by the military for assisting service members coming home from war and modify it to assist Iraq/Afghanistan veterans coming home from prison. Incarceration has been identified as a stress aftereffect of the prolonged Iraq and Afghanistan combat deployments. Notably, the rate of Iraq and Afghanistan-era incarcerated veterans increased from 4% to 13% between 2004 and 2012 for all incarcerated veterans. Successful reentry to the community from prison incarceration is difficult, with rearrest and reincarceration a frequent occurrence. Moreover, combat stress conditions may weaken the justice-involved Iraq/Afghanistan's veteran's ability to face challenges posed by the return home from prison. As in the war zone, the return home from prison may be idealized with unrealistic expectations and/or goals, thus setting up the returning veteran for disappointment, anger, deepening of alienation and disconnection from larger civilian society, and the risk of return to maladaptive mechanisms for coping. Resilience training can be provided in psychoeducational venues prior to prison release and with follow-up postrelease. Resilience building offers promise as an intervention to enhance the justice-involved veteran's successful community reentry. (PsycINFO Database Record

Identifying whether there is a nexus between Iraq and Afghanistan combat injuries and civilian violence on return from deployment is complicated by differences in reactions of individuals to combat exposure, the overlapping effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the low base rate of civilian violence after combat exposure. Moreover, the overall prevalence of violence among returning Iraq and Afghanistan combat war veterans has not been well documented. Malingered symptoms and either exaggeration or outright fabrication of war zone exposure are challenges to rendering forensic opinions, with the risk reduced by accessing military documents that corroborate war zone duties and exposure. This article serves as a first step toward understanding what may potentiate violence among returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. We offer a systematic approach toward the purpose of forensic case formulation that addresses whether combat duty/war zone exposure and associated clinical conditions are linked to criminal violence on return to civilian life.

The veteran-forensic interface is an emerging area of relevance to forensic clinicians assessing or treating returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans facing criminal sanctions. Veterans' Treatment Court (VTC) represents a recent diversion mechanism for low-level offenses that is based on a collaborative justice model. Thirty-nine percent of veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and receiving VA services reside in rural areas. Rural veterans facing criminal justice charges may be at a disadvantage due to limited access to forensic psychiatrists with relevant expertise in providing veterans services for diversion. Therefore, widening the pool of forensic clinicians who have such expertise, as well as knowledge of the signature wounds of the wars as related to aggression and reckless behavior is necessary. This article presents an overview of VTCs and discusses the role of forensic clinicians as stakeholders in this process.

Combat Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan involve hazardous front-line missions and attendant combat stress. Being ''outside the wire'' describes the danger zone; i.e., deployment outside the military base. Returning to civilian life, with no ''platoon'' to serve as a psychological safety net, veterans may once again experience- in a different sense-living ''outside the wire.'' Moreover, experiencing-or seeking help for- psychological distress is often perceived as weakness. How do we help these warriors maintain emotional, spiritual, in addition to physical, well-being ''outside the wire''? Combat experiences, if placed within a meaningful context, carry the potential to promote spiritual and emotional growth. As Frankl observed, war experiences hit the core of existential meaning, but even in great sorrow and suffering there is meaning. Framed by Frankl's work, an approach for promoting resilience in returning veterans is presented that is meaning based and transpersonal in focus. Recent combat operations in two theatres, Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, involve military ground combat and hazardous security duty. Each base has exit and entry control points (E.C.P.s). Exiting these lines of departures (L.O.D.s) on a designated mission represents entry into the danger zone, as it is an ''asymmetrical battlefield;'' i.e., without an established front line. Another significant danger involves traveling the established main supply routes (M.S.R.s) or any road where one could experience injury or fatality related to I.E.D.s (improvised explosive devices) or V.B.E.D.s (vehicle borne explosive devices). The colloquial terminology by military personnel in the field to describe deployment outside of the military base is that of being ''outside the wire.''