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Casuality of War: Incarcerated Veterans Not Just a Statistic

By David Curry

David Curry
National Staff

On Veterans Day 1992, Johnnie W. Shaffer was formally presented a Combat Infantry Badge, a Purple Heart, and a Vietnam Service Ribbon for service rendered 23 years earlier with the Americal Division in Chu Lai. It's always nice to see the system catch up with a vet and see that he gets what he's so long had coming to him in his status as an inmate in the West Virginia Correctional Center. Actually the system doesn't have to look very far for a lot of Johnnie's brothers and sisters either.

In 1985, The Veteran featured a story about incarcerated veterans, detailing their numbers and their needs. This story was intended as an update, but the most recent government publication on incarcerated veterans is older than our original story. In 1982, when the Bureau of Justice Statistics issued its most recent publication on the subject, it was reported that in 1979, about a fourth of state and federal prisoners in the U.S. were veterans of military service. Of these 65,500 prisoners, over half had served in the military during the Vietnam War and over 13,000 of these had completed tours in Southeast Asia.

Statistics never mean as much as the human beings that they represent, but the 13,000 far exceeds any estimate of POWs or MIA's alleged to have ever been held by Hanoi. The 25% figure is a smaller proportion than the 40% of American homeless who are veterans. What is most missing, however, is any more recent statistic. The date of the last public release of information on incarcerated veterans stands a warning signal of how long it's been since anyone checked to see how many veterans found a prison cell to be part of their veterans benefits package. The statistic as its 1979 date is pre-Reagan-bush and all the extremes of neglect associated with those three long terms of conservative Republican administration.

But a Bureau of Justice Statistics report sent through a time machine can't be the only source of information on incarcerated veterans, or can it? We contacted the Bureau of Prisons, the American Correctional Association, Bureau of Justice Statistics, House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), VVA Legal Services, VFW, American Legion, and American Civil Liberties Union Prison Project, and all we were able to obtain was the one 1981 publication. Maybe we'll try again later, in hopes that someone will give a damn.