A Scoping Review of Service Members and Veterans as Criminal Justice System Actors

This scoping review analyzes research on service members and veterans (SMVs) employed as law enforcement and prison officers, providing an overview of themes in the literature and concludes with a discussion on field limitations and future research needs. Through a comprehensive search of academic databases, we identified 31 studies that examine various aspects of SMV employment in criminal justice roles. Our analysis identified eight themes across studies on law enforcement (perceptions, health, misconduct and use of force, occupational success, recruitment) and prison work (international contexts, occupational success, recruitment, and hiring). While some studies show positive effects of military experience on stress management and adaptation, others indicate increased use of force incidents and misconduct complaints. The evidence regarding occupational success is mixed, with studies showing both lower emotional exhaustion and higher turnover rates among SMV officers. Our review revealed several notable limitations and gaps in the literature, highlighting the need for additional nationally representative, longitudinal, and qualitative studies. There is also a need to examine several important dimensions, including challenges veteran officers face in civilian life, motivational aspects influencing career choices, nonveteran officers’ perspectives of SMVs, and specific military background characteristics, such as combat experience, branch of service, and length of deployment.