The United States has gone considerably further in developing specialist Veterans Treatment Courts. These are not directly transferable to the UK – the legal systems and veteran populations are different, and they have higher percentages both of veterans, and of veterans in prison – but they have generated a useful body of research.

The great majority of Armed Forces veterans never enter the criminal justice system. A minority do, however, and there is now a substantial network of statutory and voluntary-sector support intended to identify veterans who come into contact with the police, courts, prisons and probation services and, where appropriate, help them address the problems associated with their offending.