“We Owe It to Those Who Shall Come After Us”: Considering the Role of Social Work Education in Disrupting Carceral Complicity

Carly Mychl Murray (), Samantha A. Martinez, Alexa Cinque, Yejin Sohn and Grace Newton
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Carly Mychl Murray: Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Samantha A. Martinez: Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Alexa Cinque: Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Yejin Sohn: Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Grace Newton: Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: Reflecting upon Mary Richmond’s early call for formalized social work training to address the historical struggles of the field, this analysis examines how American social work education has addressed the paradoxes of help and harm present in the field for more than a century. We examine how, under the guise of benevolence and care, social work has exerted social control and contributed to gendered criminalization. We use the term carceral complicity to extend the concept of carceral social work, illustrating how carceral complicity has contributed to women’s criminalization through the embedding, enacting, and invisibilizing of carceral logics in social work. In addition to describing how carceral complicity has been addressed in social work education, we illustrate the gendered nature of carceral complicity, highlighting how women have historically and contemporarily been positioned as both the proprietors and the recipients of carceral complicity. In line with recent scholarship, we suggest that through a transformative approach to social work education we may disrupt carceral complicity and support liberatory futures.

Keywords: social work education; social services; criminalized women; carceral logics; carcerality; anti-carceral social work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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