HUFFINGTON
10.07.12
FEATURE_TITLE
“THEY GET ‘EM HOOKED ON
DRUGS — THEN PUT THEM
OUT ON THE STREET.”
launched in 2010, and on Friday
mornings, when Dugan strides into
room 406 of the Philadelphia Criminal Courts building and gavels the
court into sess ion, things run pretty
much routinely.
The defendants who shuffle in
front of Dugan’s high bench, most
of them charged with non-violent
crimes such as drunk driving or
drug possession, are often a hangdog lot. They seem embarrassed to
be there and especially so when Dugan mentions his paratrooper background and exhorts them to shape
up. He peers down at them with the
mixture of irritation, exasperation
and fondness that sergeants often
reserve for their wayward soldiers.
“I want you to remember the
pride you felt when you put on
the uniform for the first time,”
he tells them. “That’s the person
I want to see in my courtroom.
Stand up straight! Treat people
with respect!”
Here’s the deal, he says. You’re
here because you’ve committed a
criminal offense. If you volunteer
for veterans court, we can connect you with the veterans services
you need — medical, dental, PTSD
counseling, drug abuse therapy,
housing, job assistance, education.
You do six months or a year of probation, show up for your appointments on time, come in here once a
month, and you graduate with your
record expunged.
But this is voluntary. You can
go have your case tried in criminal
court. If you decide to work with
me here, he tells them, you gotta
stay with it. You miss appointments, you don’t check in here, you
go back to jail.
Most vets take the deal. They go
off to the VA for a complete assessment, and on that basis Dugan
imposes a sentence of treatment
and probation, and, depending on
the defendant’s history and severity of the crime, sometimes jail
time as well.
Most, but not all, complete the
treatment. In one recent court session, one veteran failed to show up;