Social Work and Criminal Justice: working together

By NaKara Neely

            In the field of social work, there are numerous of different types of social work that you can choose to work for. One type of social work is criminal justice. In America, state and federal prisoners have continued to rise by a substantial amount. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2005 two thirds of prisoners in 30 states were arrested in less than three years and three quarters within five years. This large number of growing incarcerated people need programs to help break this chain so that there can be a decreased amount of people being put into prison. These programs are provided by social workers.

Here is a list of specific tasks that social workers do within the courts:

·      Analyzes and testifies as witnesses in domestic violence and in child and elder abuse

·      Helps courts with child custody

·      Works with at-risk children, adolescences, and adults while being on probation and provides programs to help avoid being locked up

·      Provides services to prisoners and their families through programs to help them transition back into the real world

·      Provides counseling services to victims and prisoners

·      Supports families whose child is incarcerated

·      Conduct home visits

·      Services as client support in court

While conducting research on how social work works with criminal justice, I actually learned how social work works within the court. They complete various of tasks such as helping families of imprisoned people provides counseling to prisoners, etc. This is important because without social workers I cannot imagine how more corrupt our court system would be. We NEED social workers to help the incarcerated and break those statistics. 


Works Cited:

http://work.chron.com/social-workers-position-criminal-justice-23582.html
http://onlinemsw.bu.edu/msw/resource/the-role-of-social-work-in-criminal-justice