Criminal Justice Social Work — New Models, New Opportunities
By Dan Orzech
Social Work Today
Vol. 6 No. 6 P. 34

Innovations in criminal justice such as incarceration alternatives, prevention programs, and restorative justice are creating new professional roles for social workers.

Sarah was only 14 years old when her father was killed. Two years ago, more than two decades later, she made a momentous journey, entering the steel gates of a maximum-security prison to spend five hours with the man who had brutally murdered him.

One year earlier, consumed with anger, vulnerability, and uncertainty, Sarah had spoken before a parole board, begging them not to release Jeff, her father’s killer. But after the meeting with him, Sarah spoke of how the encounter had been like going through a fire that burned away her pain and allowed the seeds of healing to take root in her life. The meeting had an equally powerful effect on Jeff.

Hundreds of similar meetings between victims and offenders involved in violent crimes have taken place in recent years, according to social worker Mark Umbreit, PhD, who spent nearly one year helping both Sarah and Jeff prepare for the event, and who sat with them while they talked. The dialogues, says Umbreit, a professor of social work at the University of Minnesota, are an outgrowth of the rapidly expanding field of restorative justice, a victim-centered approach to working with those who violate the law. It tries to directly involve those most affected by crime—the victim, the offender, their families, and the community—in the process of holding the offender accountable and serving the needs of victims. The interest in restorative justice is providing a growing number of opportunities for social workers, according to those involved in the field.

Opportunities for Social Workers
While social workers have worked in prisons since the early days of the profession, recent innovations in the criminal justice arena have opened up new opportunities for social workers in court systems: in agencies dealing with offenders’ reentry into society after being released and even in a surprising number of police departments.

Helping to create these opportunities, in part, is a growing recognition of the enormous costs of incarceration and of the role mental health problems play in criminal activity. More than one half of the inmates in the country’s prisons and jails reported mental health problems within the last year, according to a recent Justice Department survey.

What’s more, a “staggering percentage” of prisoners are serving time for something drug- or alcohol-related, according to Frederic G. Reamer, PhD, a professor of social work at Rhode Island College who serves as a member of the Rhode Island State parole board. Reamer puts the figure in Rhode Island at approximately 85% and says that’s typical of prisons and jails around the country.

These opportunities aren’t always well-known in social work circles. “Everybody in social work and social work schools knows about jobs in community mental health centers, child welfare departments, and nursing homes,” says Reamer. “That’s not the case with opportunities for social workers in the criminal justice system.”

Girl Scouts Beyond Bars
Laura Smith, LMSW, and Darlene Grant, PhD, are part of a small group of social workers in Austin, TX, who are working with Girl Scout Troop 1500. The 90 or so girls in the troop have one thing in common: their mothers are either behind bars or have recently been released from prison.

Eighty percent of women in prison have daughters, according to Grant, and maintaining ties with them can be a major challenge. Enterprising Girl Scouts Beyond Bars—the troop’s formal name—uses a donated van to take the girls to the prison to visit their mothers. The prison is located more than 90 miles from Austin, where most of the girls live, and permits visits only once per month. If it wasn’t for the Girl Scout troop, says Grant, a professor of social work at the University of Texas at Austin, most of the girls would have minimal contact with their mothers. According to Grant, many are being raised by their grandmothers, who don’t always have time to take the girls to the prison or the money to pay for long conversations when their moms call home collect.

The program—one of approximately 30 like it in the country—also provides counseling for the girls, as well as activities such as trips to the museum and the ballet. The goal, says Smith, who heads a small nonprofit agency called the Crime Prevention Institute, is to reduce the likelihood that the girls will end up in prison themselves. The daughters of women in prison are six times more likely to land in the juvenile justice system than children whose parents have not been in jail, according to Grant.

Ending the Revolving Door
Working with the Girl Scouts is only part of Smith’s work. The main focus of her agency is on reentry—helping inmates reintegrate into society after they’ve been released.

That’s an area where there are increasing opportunities for social workers, says Reamer, because a growing number of corrections departments are developing programs designed to stop the revolving door that sends inmates back to prison.

After decades of a more conservative “lock ’em up and throw away the key” ideology, he says, “we’ve gotten much wiser about the need to do very careful reentry planning. Virtually all inmates—over 99% of them—are going to return to the community. So the question is not should you or shouldn’t you put somebody in the community, but when, because the reality is they are coming back.”

Reamer’s decade and a half serving as a member of Rhode Island’s parole board has given him a front-row seat to watch this process. There are times, he says, “when inmates serve their entire sentence and leave the prison with the proverbial $50 and a plastic bag filled with a few possessions. They walk out the front gate with little or nothing, except perhaps probation with a probation officer who has a case load of 300. That can be a recipe for disaster.”

The risk, of course, is that they’re going to commit another crime and end up back behind bars. Providing individualized case management to help released inmates re-integrate into the community, says Smith, costs 90% less than the cost of pursuing, prosecuting, and reincarcerating a repeat offender. Social workers, who can help an inmate with housing, jobs, substance abuse treatment, or other counseling, are ideally positioned to work with the discharge planning and reentry process.

Smith’s agency may be particularly well-positioned to do reentry work because of its location literally inside the criminal justice system: Last year, the Crime Prevention Institute moved its office inside the Travis County State Jail in Austin. The move not only brought the agency closer to its clients, says Smith, but because the jail doesn’t charge it rent, expenses were reduced by 8% per year, allowing the agency to hire more staff.

Working for the Police
While reentry services are a rapidly growing area, there are other opportunities for social workers in the criminal justice system—some of them in perhaps unexpected places, such as police departments.

“Social workers typically don’t think about working for a police department,” says Reamer, “but, in fact, a number of police departments hire social workers in various capacities.”

Large police departments, for example—like any sizable employer—need to provide employee assistance programs. While many rely on outside employee assistance programs, some departments also hire social workers to provide initial crisis intervention to officers who are struggling in their careers because of their own mental health, substance abuse, or domestic issues.

Many police departments are also actively involved in crime prevention activities where social work training may prove extremely useful. A police department may sponsor football teams made up of gang members, says Reamer. “Instead of having them fight each other with knives and guns,” he says, the idea is, “let’s do it on a football field.” Prevention programs like that “need people who understand social services, who understand communities, [and] who understand community organizing.”

Other police departments have social workers on staff for situations that require social services more than an arrest. That could involve a couple having a major argument, which may escalate and lead to domestic violence and arrest, but could also be prevented, or it may involve a homeless person who is having a psychotic episode on the street.

Police departments also rely on social workers for critical incident intervention. “There might be a shooting at a school,” explains Reamer, “or something less severe, such as a big fight where no one is killed but which is still pretty ugly. The police might call on their social worker to come in to work with the kids to try to do some deescalation. Many departments are getting much better at police-community relations in an effort to enhance cooperation, particularly in high crime areas, and they may use a social worker to facilitate that—a social worker who understands how to work with community groups, particularly where there’s a lot of conflict involved.”

Some police departments also use social workers to provide services to victims. A rape victim or the victim of a domestic assault often needs someone to provide both support and information, Reamer says. “Someone who’s trained in crisis intervention,” he says, “and who really understands police matters and how the court system works, cannot only provide solace and support to the rape victim, but also talk about that person’s options in terms of criminal charges, and issues such as witness protection. That requires both social work skills and an understanding of the criminal justice system.”

Innovation in the Courts
Many courts have also developed innovative programs in recent years that provide ideal opportunities for social workers. These include specialty courts such as truancy courts, drug courts, or mental health courts, all designed to provide social services in lieu of incarceration whenever possible.

A typical case may involve a teenager who has dropped out of school and is engaging in high-risk behavior, says Reamer. “Dad may be in prison,” he says, “and mom has psychiatric issues, so things are chaotic at home, and the kid has little supervision, so he’s getting involved in drugs.”

In that situation, Reamer says, a judge and a prosecutor may say, “What is the point of locking this kid up? This kid needs a lot of help.” Instead, they may refer him to a truancy court or a drug court, which are essentially joint efforts between the court and social services. A social worker may then be called in to do an assessment and come up with a proposal that could include services ranging from counseling to substance abuse treatment to residential care. The plan is then approved by the judge, who would typically require the youth to participate in these services, as well as report to a probation officer.

The case is monitored regularly by the court, and if the adolescent is compliant, the charges will likely be dropped. If not, the judge may impose gradually increasing sanctions, beginning with a warning and possibly more frequent reporting and urine screens, and eventually leading to incarceration.

In a similar fashion, some public defender offices are working closely with the courts and prosecutors to divert adult defendants from the formal court system—if public safety risks are deemed reasonable—and providing them with social services designed to address the problems that brought them into court.

Jobs in Jails—And Out of Jails
There are also—as there have been for one century—jobs for social workers in prisons and jails themselves. These are the positions most social workers picture when they think about working in the criminal justice field, says Reamer: providing individual or group counseling to inmates.

Many social workers, however, may not be aware of the full scope of recent innovations in this area. Many prisons today offer specialty programs for inmates, including drug and alcohol programs or specialized treatment for sex offenders. With the enormous number of inmates struggling with substance abuse, many correctional facilities now have entire wings devoted to drug and alcohol programs. “Everybody on that wing,” says Reamer, “is in a drug and alcohol treatment program. It’s what they’re doing, but it’s prison.” Frequently, these programs are run by social workers.

A renewed emphasis on what is often called community corrections is also providing new opportunities for social workers. These are residential programs for offenders outside the prison but still under the auspices of the correction department. After serving part of his or her sentence, an inmate may be moved to a community-based program that involves much less structure and supervision than prison, but far more than simply being released to the streets on parole. “You don’t see prison bars or guard towers,” says Reamer, “but these are correction programs.”

Changing Attitudes
With their clinical skills in arranging services and providing crisis intervention, social workers are ideally positioned to fill many of these positions. Often, however, the hiring agencies don’t advertise specifically for social workers, according to Katherine van Wormer, PhD, a professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa.

In growing numbers, however, van Wormer’s social work students are finding their way into jobs in the criminal justice system, often by taking internships in the field.

At the Crime Prevention Institute in Austin, Laura Smith is also seeing increasing numbers of social work students interested in working in criminal justice. “When I was in graduate school a half-dozen years ago,” she says, “no one else in my entire cohort was interested in prison work. That’s starting to change. I see many more social work students now who are saying they’re interested in reentry.”

The changing attitudes may also be spilling over to some corrections officers, who have not always assigned social services the highest priority. “A degree in criminal justice doesn’t necessarily come with training in how to deal with behavioral issues,” says Smith. Because of her staff’s experience in crisis intervention, Smith has begun to get calls from prison staff saying, “We’ve got an inmate in crisis. What should we do?”

The change in attitude, however, isn’t always universal. The correctional officers, notes Smith, “are less likely to see us as helpful than the warden.”

But the sometimes marginal status that social services may hold inside correctional facilities does not apply throughout the criminal justice system.

In the newer initiatives, says Reamer, social work is embraced. “When you work in a drug court or a truancy court,” he says, “I think social workers feel far more appreciated because the court has said, ‘We value this social work function and we want you to be here.’”

— Dan Orzech is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and editor of “Mindfulness Update,” a newsletter for mindfulness-based stress reduction practitioners.

The man who made the threatening call was quickly caught and confessed to the hate crime. That made it a slam-dunk case, the prosecutor told the community center director, and the perpetrator would probably receive the maximum penalty. But the prosecutor outlined another option: a Neighborhood Accountability Board, where the community center director and others from the local Islamic community, along with concerned neighbors, could talk about the impact the crime had on them and their community, and make recommendations about how to hold the perpetrator responsible and how to repair the harm he caused. The man who made the call would also be present, along with anyone he chose to support him.

That was the route the community center director chose, and after two intense sessions, an agreement was reached. The perpetrator would write a letter of apology to the Muslim community, attend lectures at the Islamic community center to learn more about Islam, and speak to different civic organizations and schools.

The case, says Mark Umbreit, PhD, who directs a restorative justice and peacemaking center at the University of Minnesota’s school of social work, is an example of restorative justice at its best, focusing on the needs of victims and the community, rather than simply meting out punishment, and bringing the decision-making process to the neighborhood level.

Restorative justice has been growing rapidly in popularity, with thousands of cases involving property crimes and minor assaults referred each year to victim offender mediation programs in numerous states. Even conservative legal climates such as Texas and Orange County, California, are adopting the approach, in part because of its ability to divert cases from overcrowded and expensive court systems, and to reduce the revolving door that keeps offenders returning to prison. Studies have shown, for example, that a restorative justice approach can reduce recidivism among juvenile offenders by up to 26%, according to Umbreit.

The restorative justice approach is a blending of work with individuals, communities, and policy change, says Umbreit—which makes it ideal for social workers. “I cannot think of a better example of expressing the richness of what social work is, at both the micro and macro level,” he says. “Restorative justice calls upon all the skills that make social workers social workers.”

— DO