Veterans and Mass Incarceration with Jason Higgins

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Travis

What do you picture when you hear the term United States Military Veteran?

While that picture probably looks a little different for every individual, for a lot of us it probably doesn't look like a person who is incarcerated. If that's the case for you, Virginia Tech's Jason Higgins would probably like for you to broaden your perspective. His book, Prisoners After War, that was published in January, focuses on people who've gone to war, returned home, and then at some point found themselves incarcerated. I was curious how Jason got involved in this project, how he went about interviewing the more than 60 veterans that are a part of the book, and what he learned along the way. And thankfully, Jason was enough to answer all those questions and more.

Jason is a digital scholarship coordinator with Virginia Tech Publishing and an assistant professor jointly affiliated with Virginia Tech University Libraries and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Jason shared how he first got started capturing the oral histories of veterans, what led him to this specific project, and the important role he believes that oral histories play in the greater context of historical scholarship. He also shared some of the new insights he gained from the veterans and how he thinks some of the efforts they're already undertaking could be adapted to a broader population. I'm Travis Williams and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

Travis

talk to you about your book, Prisoners After War, which I guess came out in January. And so I think maybe to start off, I'll just ask you really broadly, what's your book about?

Jason

It's about veterans who come home from the experience of war and have a variety of social problems that lead to incarceration. So like the title of it suggests, it's about people come home from war and go to prison.

Travis

Yeah. So it kind of sits at this intersection between I guess wars and mass incarceration. I guess I'm curious because I hear a lot about, I hear a lot about veterans just in my life. I feel like there's a lot of things that are connected to honoring veterans, to saluting veterans, I feel like they're a part of a lot of different holidays, not even just military holidays at this point in America. Why did you, do you think that this particular aspect of being a veteran has gone overlooked for so long?

Jason

I have found that there tends to be a superficial level of support for honoring troops and acknowledging veterans, but oftentimes it's a specific type of veteran that upholds a certain view of what people think a veteran should represent. And what I argue in my other book, Service Denied, is that there is no the veteran. People are diverse and they come into military service and they come out of military service with a diversity of ideas and beliefs and... experience that shape who they become afterwards, right? So if they don't fit that mold, then we kind of forget about them collectively. And that's especially true for black veterans, people with various unseen disabilities, women veterans. So sometimes whenever I talk about veterans, I have people close their eyes and just picture what a veteran looks like. And oftentimes it's this very stereotypical image of what a veteran is. But even whenever people acknowledge the complexity of war and its psychological aftermath, incarcerated veterans are left out of that discussion too. So for example, if you think about what I might describe as like the triplets of veteran reintegration problem, right? So PTSD is going to be one of them, homelessness, and then suicide. And while those are all really important topics to think critically about and to acknowledge, incarceration gets left out of that, even though there are far more veterans in the criminal justice system than there are living on the streets. So there are about 40 ,000 homeless veterans and there are over 100 ,000 veterans in prison. So why is that? I can't, I don't have a clear answer for the...why people selectively forget certain groups, but I think that it's a lot easier to see a homeless veteran. So in many ways, people who live behind the veil of incarceration in the United States, they're invisible populations. But also, if someone commits a crime, they're seen at the bottom of the social hierarchy in the United States, whereas veterans are at the top. And so there's just too much cognitive dissonance. And it's a lot harder to see someone who commits a crime, especially a violent crime, as a victim of the war, right? And I pushed back against that in the book. I don't think of these veterans as victims or perpetrators. I think of them as just complex humans who have been affected by a number of different social factors that could lead to these types of problems. And we can talk about this maybe more later on, but a lot of the veterans I interviewed, they transformed their lives after military and after prison. So in many ways, the people I'm talking to, they've overcome adversity.

Travis

So, yeah, I definitely, I definitely want to ask you about that. How did you get interested in this intersection?

Jason

That's a long story, but I'll try to simplify it. I was a history undergraduate major, I'm first generation, no one in my family graduated from high school.

I come from the Delta Mississippi River area, Southeast Arkansas, where nothing ever happens. And so whenever I was really interested in reading history and learning about history, it was almost like that happened in an alternative reality because no one I knew ever, you know, got to see or experience things like that except for veterans in the community. And I was always really interested in storytelling.

And even as a history major, I find myself kind of bored by top -down history. You know, strategic operational histories that treat people like numbers did not appeal to me intellectually at all. And I was, because I'm working class, I kind of associate myself with the people in history who would not have been in positions of power. So...I started doing oral history interviews with veterans as an undergrad. I started interviewing World War II veterans in the community, and then that quickly transitioned into a Vietnam War veteran project. And that's whenever I started realizing that even though the World War II veterans I talked to had experienced horrific amounts of trauma, the Vietnam veteran generation had more difficulties coming home from war. So that kind of...led me down this path to studying Vietnam war history and especially black history. And that's whenever I started realizing this intersection of institutional racism, discrimination in the military, how these people come home from war and end up in the criminal justice system.

Travis

In your book, I know you go through veterans from Vietnam, veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan of the focus group of what you have in this book. Is there something about the Vietnam War that created kind of a turning point in this situation?

Jason

On multiple levels. I think the Vietnam War is a pivotal moment of reckoning in American history and society. Especially the connection between the rise of mass incarceration and the Vietnam War, which no other scholars had made. But, veterans themselves already understood this kind of problem anyway themselves. They were engaged in grassroots efforts to acknowledge this problem since the 1980s. So Nixon launched the war on drugs in 1971. This is at the height of the anti -war movement. This is at the height of black resistance in the military to the Vietnam War. It's at the height of racial conflict between white and black soldiers in the military. It's a moment of considerable social change and backlash. So Nixon kind of rides this conservative backlash all the way to the presidency. And think about 1971. This is also whenever Daniel Ellsberg releases the Pentagon Papers, which exposes all of the lies that the American public had been told about the reasons why American soldiers were dying in Vietnam the height of that anti -war movement. And so Nixon, in many ways, deflects attention from legitimate concerns and protests about the war and blames heroin addicted soldiers in Vietnam for losses. In his war on drugs speech, the public enemy number one, he identifies heroin. So there's a lot of myth building around Vietnam veterans and heroin addiction. There were some studies that came out at the time that suggested about 15 % of American armed forces personnel in Vietnam had used heroin. And so the military engages in this type of urinalysis, mandatory drug testing. They start kicking out soldiers with other than honorable discharges in mass. So before 1969, there were only a couple of hundred less than honorable discharges a year. And by 1972, it's up to 25 ,000 per year. Right. So like as the United States withdraws from Vietnam, it's simultaneously kicking out disproportionately black soldiers, people who had been had tested positive for drug use. And the unfortunate part of this is that if you're kicked out of the military with the other than honorable discharge, you don't get VA benefits. You don't get the GI Bill, there are a lot of restrictions on discharge type. So it's not a coincidence that African Americans are far more likely to be discharged without veterans benefits in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That's at the apex. Like that point where mass incarceration is rising. So in the 1970s, there were about 200 ,000 people in state and federal prison. And over those next decades, it increases exponentially to over 2 million by 2000. So I mean, it's like they're coming home for more at the rise of mass incarceration. And they're coming home with all of these social problems, undiagnosed PTSD, and they lack any kind of support for getting counseling disability benefits. And so by 1978, the Department of Justice did its first study and realized that a quarter of the prison population were military veterans. So one in four people in prison had served in the military. The vast majority of them were Vietnam veterans. The majority were African -American veterans with disabilities.

Travis

Wow. So, that sounds…

Jason

That was a lot.

Travis

That was a lot. But it sounds like the perfect storm of just a big mess. And then it sounds like maybe prison almost became like the catchall for a lot of the problems.

Jason

And that was a direct result of policy. So at the same time, state hospitals are deinstitutionalizing. And so people with mental health problems are no longer going into these psychiatric institutions. They're going to prison. And so Nixon also defunded a lot of the Great Society program. So a lot of social programs that the Johnson administration had championed since 1964, 1965. We're talking about millions of dollars, federal money that's being spent in communities on social welfare, employment training, opportunities for impoverished communities to uplift themselves. All of that money becomes funneled into policing and prison building by the 1970s. So you're also seeing a lot of federal support for people to embark upon social change in their communities at this grassroots level. All of that funding and support is being diverted to prisons. So that's happening at the same time too.

Travis

I'm curious when you go about doing a project like this. I know gathering oral histories from individuals is a huge part of what you do. What place do you see oral histories playing in this larger context of the top -down history stuff?

Jason

For me as a writer, as an author, as a researcher, as a historian, as a human, they're central to the story. I was very interested in writing about the experiences of ordinary people who survived extraordinary events. And so most of the people I'm writing about are not famous. The books out there on mass incarceration that do deal with that often they're dealing with like the same intellectual leaders, kind of these famous cases. I wanted to highlight the people who were left behind in the shadows of society. Like what were their experiences and how did these global forces affect their own lives?

So I look at the bottom up history and so I tried to capture their voices or center their voices in this story. And I hope that I did justice to that. So as I'm telling this greater context of the war on drugs, the war in Vietnam, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm centering their lives and how they experience those historic changes.

Travis

How did you go about finding veterans to talk to? Because I think I read you interviewed or at least that you at least for just this book like over 60 or around 60 veterans. How did you find them?

Jason

 In different ways. In the beginning, I was soliciting interview. So social media is very powerful and there are a lot of groups of veterans online. And so I would connect with a community leader ask them to share. information about my project. So I was very active on social media in the beginning. I also discovered a lot of veterans in my community. So you would be surprised any community in the United States, there might be formerly incarcerated veterans in those small towns. So because I believe that these are invisible forces that affect a lot of us, we can hear from those voices within our own towns and communities. For example, one of the veterans I interviewed, we had daughters the same age. They were in the same class, in the same community. And this guy had been to Afghanistan four times, had experienced multiple traumatic brain injuries, had dealt with substance use disorder. All of these global problems that I had been researching, He lived them and he was just a couple miles down the road from me. So these problems, even though incarcerated veterans are invisible, they are ubiquitous. They are everywhere. So that was another way I found them was in my local community. And then oral history is amazing because once you talk to one person, they'll introduce you to three more and then those three introduce you to nine. And then you start building a reputation for doing good work and making sure that that work is ethical, that's shared, that's collaborative, that's not extractive, especially with communities who are already marginalized and vulnerable. I was very cautious about how I told their stories. And over time, At first I would share information and clips from interviews online with permission, obviously, but even that I started to see could be problematic. So I stopped even doing that. And whenever I wrote this book, it's open access, it's freely available to anyone online. But before I published it, I sent each chapter to the veterans whose stories are told in those chapters and asked them to read it provide feedback, to approve of it, to give final consent on it. Because these are people's lives and they're still alive, most of them. And I wanted to, you know, not only do honor to the project, but also acknowledge that they're human beings who have personal lives who may be affected by these topics.

Travis

Yeah, the stuff you're describing reminds me a lot of working at the newspaper and building up sources and honoring people's stories with the way we present them to people. And you're right, once you become known for that, the floodgates can often open as you're the guy to come talk to.

When you were going through and you're hearing these oral histories, during those interviews, was there anything that surprised you or maybe changed or modified kind of your view of a big moment in history?

Jason

Absolutely. That's a fantastic question. There were many surprises. And I'll talk about...maybe a couple of them. One of the most reaffirming surprises of the book was how many people actually transformed their lives after prison, who had endured and persevered through unspeakable horrors and traumas of war and the trauma of incarceration. And then they dedicated their lives to service. Like this idea of second service that you hear about and see in veteran communities does not end or begin with a certain type of veteran, that is extended to all types of veterans. And so a lot of these formerly incarcerated veterans, they rededicate their lives to justice. One, for example, is going to law school right now. He came from intergenerational trauma. His father was in Vietnam, got into a criminal lifestyle. He was in Iraq, went to four years in prison, and now he's, you know, creating a better world for his own son.

So he's being a change in his communities, volunteering with youth. And that was not exceptional. That was the common thread was how many people were really dedicated to a cause greater than themselves, even though they had experienced these social problems and led to incarceration. Now they're working to change those systems and to engage in activism, to be proponents of criminal justice reform.

Another big surprise was that at first I was studying African -American history in the context of the 1960s, the rise of mass incarceration. I thought I was writing a book about black Vietnam veterans, and that wasn't necessarily true. The book extended, so I followed the stories and that allowed me to tell this greater intergenerational story about veterans between Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and how they interact.

And what I discovered was thousands of Vietnam veterans are volunteering in their local communities in these veteran treatment courts that are supporting Iraq, Afghanistan, post 9 11 veterans who are experiencing similar challenges as a Vietnam generation. But the Vietnam generation didn't have a role model generation of veterans. World War II veterans in many ways turn their backs on Vietnam vets. And so now the VVA.

The Vietnam Veterans of America, for example, their founding motto is never again will one generation of veterans turn their backs on another. And so they're actively organized to enable post 9 -11 veterans to transition successfully into society. And that includes veterans involved in criminal justice. So that was one of those remarkable things that I didn't know about when the Red First started this project, but...

That's the story I tell. And it was a real challenge to try to write about multiple generations and kind of get past that very traditional chronological history approach. Because these people are still alive. You know, the Vietnam War still shapes our lives today, whether that be the veterans in our community or foreign policy, or even the celebrations that we have of veterans on Memorial Day. You know, like Vietnam War memory is still there but it's influencing these veterans to volunteer as criminal justice reform advocates in their communities. How do Vietnam veterans and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how do they compare, how do their experiences compare then and now? There are many similarities, especially thinking about post -traumatic stress disorder. Less than honorable discharges are still a problem, although they affect different groups of people today. So it was racialized more heavily in the Vietnam War era. Today, veterans are far more diverse than they ever have been in American society. So the number of women who serve, for example, is far greater. About 17 % of the military is women today. So that brings up whole lot of new social challenges from healthcare to sexual violence. This is a huge problem today. If you are familiar with the story of Vanessa Guillen, for example, who was attacked at Fort Hood in the summer of 2020. So there are a lot of new and unique challenges that veterans today face, but they're not entirely different from the Vietnam War generation. And I think Vietnam veterans get it They've lived it and even though their stories aren't exactly the same, they do speak the same language. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in many ways look up to Vietnam vets as the, and this is something I've found in interviewing most generations of veterans. They'll say, well, yeah, what I lived through was pretty challenging, but it was nothing like those guys in World War II. And I imagine if you interviewed World War II veterans who were at Normandy, they would say, well, yeah, this was really hard for me, but it wasn't nothing like those guys who were at Bellowood in the First World War. So there's a tendency to kind of maybe honor the past in a way. So they, but they do reciprocate it. And then I think there is a lot of mutual respect among different generations of veterans. That's something that's, I think, unique.

Travis

Yeah, that is really interesting to hear. My grandfather was a World War II veteran. And he kind of had that kind of that mindset, I think, of like, well, you know, it was what it was. But, you know, I wasn't in the trenches with no man's land and all that type of stuff.

Jason

Yeah, that's so I think it's a sign of humility in some ways. But there are other challenges that are different, too. For example, the nature of the fighting the global war on terrorism is completely different. The average age in the Vietnam War was 18, 19 years old. So it was one of the youngest fighting generations. World War II, it was slightly older. Today, with age comes family responsibilities. Percentage of Americans who serve in the military is historically low, fewer than one half of 1 % of the US population serves actively in the military. So fighting the forever wars meant that the same people were doing multiple deployments. So they would go off and fight for 12 or 15 months, come home, try to readjust to their family life, try to recondition themselves to life in a non -combat zone. And then they'd start to prepare to redeploy just a couple of months later. So their lives were interrupted.

And life went on in many ways without them. And they're kind of, I would describe them as this forgotten generation. And, you know, the Afghanistan war was fought for nearly 20 years. And so you have a group of veterans who continued that fighting, even though a lot of media attention stopped talking about it, you know, at least until the fall of Kabul. So there are a lot of different challenges. With multiple deployments comes more, Mental health problems, so traumatic brain injury is a result of the conditions of fighting the global war on terrorism. So improvised explosive devices, IEDs cause traumatic brain injury, which is a different type of wound compared to PTSD. Sometimes they happen together, but they have different symptoms. Substance use disorder.

The US military was prescribing millions of opioids to people in the military in the early 2000s. Now today, over drug overdoses, the leading cause of death in America, there were reforms to the VA on their policies of prescribing opioids to deal with back pain and injury and other problems. And in the wake of those reforms, it became harder to get prescription drugs. And so veterans turned to heroin, fentanyl is a killer, you know, I mean, it's destroying communities. And so veterans are part of that conversation too. And one of the reasons I want to write about incarcerated veterans is because I believe these problems affect all Americans. But if people tend to have a certain amount of reverence towards veteran communities. So I wanted to show how if the war on drugs and the problems give rise to mass incarceration can affect even veterans, then they can affect us all and maybe it will promote more understanding of people whose lives end up going in that direction. So that was a central goal of the project was to illuminate the social problems that people face in America today.

Travis

I want to say, what can we do about this? And that's just a big broad question, but maybe you could answer that maybe from an institutional standpoint, what can we do about this as a country, as a community? But then maybe what can I do about this as an individual?

Jason

Yeah. I think veterans are already doing the work. So veteran treatment courts are this model for criminal justice reform that I would argue could extend far beyond veteran community. So these are local courts that take federal funding, and they funnel those into local courtrooms through the VA.

And so people involved in the criminal justice system have an entire community of people dedicated to preventing them from going back to jail or prison. So this includes disability benefits, includes employment opportunities, someone there from a university who can help someone transition into college, use their GI bill. They can help everything from marriage counseling to housing needs.

What that is is a socialized model of criminal justice reform that uses the power of the federal government to avoid recidivism. And it works. Like these veteran treatment courts have the lowest recidivism rates in America. It's not even close. Like these people who pass these really intensive programs, they go on to be not only productive citizens in their community, but oftentimes they pay that forward to other people in their community who are also encountering those same challenges. And I said earlier that the opposite happened in the Vietnam War era, that Johnson had all of these social programs that was funneling federal money into local communities for those exact things, housing, employment opportunities, educational programs. Nixon diverted it to police and prison.

And what we know is despite billions of dollars going into the Department of Justice, it has not prevented crime. And if anything has exploded that problem. So we're investing in the wrong ways to deal with social problems. We're criminalizing and punishing people who have mental health problems where we could be rehabilitating. And the amazing thing about veterans is people are willing to give them a second chance Because they see veterans as the best of us like the the greatest generation ideas about how people are selfless Citizens who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the country And so there's a general willingness among the public to give them the benefit of doubt to acknowledge that they've had trauma in their lives But what I would point out is if you grew up poor in America, you've experienced trauma. You've experienced mental health problem, so If we can think about how we might take that model and adapt it to civilian society, I think that would solve a lot of the social problems in America.

As far as what an individual can do, they can become knowledgeable, they can advocate in their community for these things, they can read the book. It's open access, it's free. So you can learn about this history and the ongoing challenges. You can vote. You can vote for policymakers who are proponents of reform. I mean, I try not to become too idealistic because that can be problematic, but I think just get started and doing something good in your own community will go a long way.

Travis

And thanks to Jason for talking to us about his book and the intersection of veterans and mass incarceration. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at vt .edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.