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The few veterans courts in the nation are modeled on drug courts that allow defendants to avoid prison in exchange for strict monitoring. Most are only a couple of months old and it is difficult to track their effectiveness, but the results from the first court, which opened in Buffalo, N.Y., in January 2008, are striking. Of the more than 100 veterans who have passed through that court, only two had to be returned to the traditional criminal court system because they could not shake narcotics or criminal behavior, said Judge Robert Russell - a far lower rate of recidivism than in drug courts. "It's the right thing to do for those who have made a number of sacrifices for us," Russell said. "If they've been damaged and injured in the course of their service . . . and we can help them become stable, we must." There are no comprehensive statistics on how often veterans get in trouble with the law, and the majority never become entangled with the legal system. But psychiatrists and law enforcement officials agree that the traumas of combat can lead to addiction and criminality. Studies have shown that as many as half of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer post-traumatic stress and other disorders, and mental health is the second-most-treated ailment for returning veterans in the Department of Veterans Affairs system.

Since Russell's court started, veterans courts have opened in Orange and Santa Clara counties in California; Tulsa; and Anchorage, Alaska. Pittsburgh, southern Wisconsin, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, Colo., are opening or considering new courts this year. Some in Congress have proposed a federal program to help spread veterans courts across the country. Most veterans courts admit only nonviolent felony offenders, though some include violent crimes. Defendants are required to plead guilty to their crimes. In exchange for a suspended sentence that can include prison time, they must consent to regular court visits, counseling and random drug testing. Should they waver from the straight and narrow, their sentences go into effect. Orange County, Calif., Superior Court Judge Wendy Lindley started her veterans court in November after a young Iraq war veteran on her docket died of a drug overdose. "It was horrible," she said. As in most of the nation's nascent veterans courts, many of the defendants in Lindley's court fought in the Vietnam or Persian Gulf wars. But she has seen a few Iraq war veterans, all of whom had clean histories before joining the military but started getting into trouble after they returned.

In light of the review announced today, Susan Kelleher, a reporter for the Seattle Times, contacted Ms. Silicio, now living in Everett, Washington, to get her reaction. Ms. Kelleher writes: The news came as a salve for Tami Silicio, an Everett woman who was working as a military contractor when she took the first published photo of fallen U.S. soldiers’ coffins in 2004. Silicio’s photo, published in The Seattle Times, fueled a political firestorm over whether the U.S. was manipulating public opinion or protecting family privacy by blacking out images of the Iraqi War dead. It was a debate Silicio said she neither welcomed nor intended when she initially shared the photo with family and friends. “It was a passionate picture that they turned political,” she said on Tuesday. “They should be honored coming home. They should be addressed. What parent doesn’t want their child honored when they come home?” Allowing coffins to be photographed more widely, she said, would put the focus back on the soldiers.