BATON ROUGE - The Veterans Treatment Court will provide veterans arrested for certain offenses an opportunity to be rehabilitated.

"Veterans Treatment Court is an acknowledgement to that veteran by the justice system that they are very much aware of how they might have landed there," said Earnest Buckner Jr., with the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs.

It's the third such program in the state and will service eligible Baton Rouge-area veterans who find themselves on the wrong side of the law, often as a side effect of what they experienced while serving their country.

"They did something wrong because they came back and couldn't put up with regular society because of the stress that they went through. That's where this court is going to come in and take that place because we're going to put them into treatment. They're going to put them into training and they have to accomplish all of those things before they go back out in to the community," said Byron Comeaux with the American Legion.

The court will provide eligible veterans with substance abuse or mental health treatment-- as well as provide resources for housing, employment, and education. Once completed, their conviction will be set aside or prosecution dismissed.

It isn't available to veterans with murder or sex offenses or a DWI that resulted in someone's death.

Candidates will be flagged by parish prison and referred to the court, but only if they want to be.

"A lot of our veterans are so ashamed they won't even admit they are a veteran once they're incarcerated," said Dr. Lawton Searcy who works with veterans at Elayn Hunt Correctional.

District Attorney Hillar Moore says they are looking into ways to make that process easier.

"I am afraid that the veterans are too proud a group of people to say 'I'm a veteran and i need help'. I've seen that. We'd like to find a more robust way to identify veterans who are charged," said Moore.

The grant that funds the court will cover around 300 veteran's treatments.

The average time in the program is around one year.