Introduction

Local officials in Texas counties are authorized to establish Veterans Courts. This publication provides county and court officials with resources that may be helpful as they consider the design and implementation of a Veterans Court in their own communities.  During the 81st Texas State Legislative Session, Senator Rodney Ellis (Houston) and Representative Allen Vaught (Dallas) authored SB 112, which passed as part of SB 1940, authored by Senator Leticia Van de Putte (San Antonio). Taking effect on September 1, 2009 as Chapter 617 of the Health and Safety Code, local officials in Texas were given the authority to establish Veterans Courts. Harris County was the first to implement a specialty court for veterans. Funded in part by the Criminal Justice Division of the Governor’s Office, the Harris County program also received support from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission (formerly the Task Force on Indigent Defense) to support the defense component of its program.

The Texas Indigent Defense Commission provides financial and technical support to counties to develop and maintain quality, cost-effective indigent defense systems that meet the needs of local communities and the requirements of the Constitution and state law. In addition to providing state funding to counties for the provision of indigent defense services, the Commission provides information, technical assistance and an array of additional resources for counties to improve their systems.  Since 2003, the Commission has awarded funding to 7 counties to support their efforts to provide specialized defender programs that represent defendants with mental health issues, including the first stand-alone mental health public defender in the nation.

As more counties explore the possibility of creating their own programs to meet the needs of veterans, the Commission can provide resources and assistance to help ensure that a participant’s right to defense counsel is adequately protected, a particularly important consideration for defendants with mental health issues. The Commission’s research has demonstrated that defense attorneys with special mental health training can provide better representation to their clients. In fact, one of the key findings in the Commission’s 2010 report, Representing the Mentally Ill Offender, showed statistically significant reductions in recidivism up to 18 months after case disposition.

While the Commission’s primary objective for compiling this information is focused on the role of defense counsel in representing veterans, some of the material provides insight into the creation and operation of a Veterans Court, including links to a recently published Policy and Procedure Manual for the Buffalo Veterans Treatment Court in Buffalo, New York.

Clearing Method

Because all the columns are floated, this layout uses a clear:both declaration in the footer rule. This clearing technique forces the .container to understand where the columns end in order to show any borders or background colors you place on the .container. If your design requires you to remove the footer from the .container, you'll need to use a different clearing method. The most reliable will be to add a <br class="clearfloat" /> or <div class="clearfloat"></div> after your final floated column (but before the .container closes). This will have the same clearing effect.

Logo Replacement

An image placeholder was used in this layout in the header where you'll likely want to place a logo. It is recommended that you remove the placeholder and replace it with your own linked logo.

Be aware that if you use the Property inspector to navigate to your logo image using the SRC field (instead of removing and replacing the placeholder), you should remove the inline background and display properties. These inline styles are only used to make the logo placeholder show up in browsers for demonstration purposes.

To remove the inline styles, make sure your CSS Styles panel is set to Current. Select the image, and in the Properties pane of the CSS Styles panel, right click and delete the display and background properties. (Of course, you can always go directly into the code and delete the inline styles from the image or placeholder there.)

Backgrounds

By nature, the background color on any block element will only show for the length of the content. This means if you're using a background color or border to create the look of a side column, it won't extend all the way to the footer but will stop when the content ends. If the .content block will always contain more content, you can place a border on the .content block to divide it from the column.