Synthesis Post

By: Katy Fedurek, Kendrick Tran, Nakara Neely

Society today requires services provided by the government and or private practices to help people reach their full potential. Criminal justice and social work play an important role in the development of any community in the world. Social workers emphasize connecting with citizens and aiding with their overall well-being. Criminal Justice as a field focuses on preventing problems from occurring in the first place and if they do come up, dealing with them accordingly. These two fields have many different specializations that serve different areas of the community.


source: http://www.cep-probation.org/seminar-in-switzerland-social-work-works/

Within this blog, you can find helpful resources regarding the basics of social work and important topics every upcoming social worker should be familiar with. The history and background behind social work played an important role in the development of the field today. There are many influential heroes in the field, including but not limited to, Clara Barton who created the American Red Cross, and Jane Adams who created the Hull House, housing for the poor in the 19th century. These two women are still important today because they started a movement to help others. Before diving into this field, it is also important to understand all of the steps required to become a social worker. The minimum requirement to be a social worker is receiving a Bachelor's degree from an accredited university. This blog post explains all the different levels of social work, including the benefits of obtaining your Master's degree or a Ph.D. There are many different subfields of social work, such as gerontological, alcohol and substance abuse, child welfare, family services, and many other categories. Choosing a sub-field to work in can relate to past life experiences or someone's personality traits. Many people go into the field of social work because their past life experiences prompted them to help others. Empathy is one of the most important qualities a social worker should have. Most clients are in a state of crisis or emotional distress. Social workers play a large part in caring for, understanding, and empowering their clients.

Criminal justice as a whole represents many different sub-fields that essentially serve in different capacities. Whether as a police officer on the field, preventing crime and investigating dangerous situations, or in the courtroom keeping the integrity of the law in check. All of these diverse fields serve as an integral part of our society and its judicial system. This is further talked about in our blog post titled “Jobs You Can Get In Criminal Justice”. Following this, the morality of our decisions that each person faces day to day remains a concern for law enforcement everywhere. Officers can potentially affect a person for the rest of their life based on the decisions they have to make in a split-second. These moral ethics are further talked about in the blog post titled “Criminal Justice Ethics: A Look on Delivery and Style (Prompt #4)”. Each situation varies greatly on the context, background, and the people involved. With that said, people going into the criminal justice field face an uphill battle due to preconceived notions about what goes on in law enforcement and the abuse of discretion that some officers may have. We talk about this in greater detail in “Preconceived Notions and Breaking Them”. Anybody wanting to succeed needs to have moral integrity, sound decision making, and a level head in stressful situations. Since not everyone has these qualities, the people in this field are all the more important due to how essential they are to the community.

source: https://crossculturalsocialwork.wordpress.com

Due to many of the problems that our society faces, social workers and criminal justice professionals are required to handle different issues and help keep communities intact. Problems such as abuse, neglect, crime, and disorder need to be addressed by professionals that truly care about the society and their impact on the community. Although sometimes thankless, social workers and criminal justice representatives greatly affect the lives that they touch and are needed for a community to be successful. Social workers and professionals in the field of criminal justice relate to each other through the high diversity of specializations within each field while also having the primary goal of taking care of society’s needs. People that are affected by troubled upbringings can have disturbed morals which require social workers to set them right again while people in criminal justice professions can prevent harmful situations from happening in the first place. Due to educational barriers, misrepresentation in society, and overall lack of desire for these types of jobs, it’s all the more important to bring to light the benefits that both of these fields bring to any community.