Social Work Blog Social work updates from NASW
With the increasing number of women in prison, understanding incarcerated women’s psychological health is a timely and necessary line of research to guide policy and practices within prisons. This understanding influences prison design, service coordination, and intervention development. Social workers working with incarcerated populations especially can benefit from further research into imprisonment’s effects on women. Knowledge of how women psychologically ... Read More »
Tag Archives: prison
NASW Social Justice Brief urges social workers push to end solitary confinement, offers guidance to help inmates
On any given day 80,000 to 100,000 inmates in U.S. prisons, jails or juvenile detention facilities are in solitary confinement. The practice can cause long-term damage to the mental health of inmates. This Social Justice Brief from the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), Solitary Confinement: A Clinical Social Work Perspective, offers and overview of this issue. It urges social ... Read More »
Returning Home: Reintegration after Prison or Jail
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In 2013, there were 2.3 million persons in U.S. prisons and jails. Eventually 95% of these people will be released. As of 2013, there are 850,000 persons on parole after release. Yet these people have great difficulty re-integrating back into society. The data shows that within 3 years of ... Read More »
A Social Work Response to Solitary Confinement
In recent years, there has been a growing national movement to challenge the practice and premise for using solitary confinement as a method of behavioral control in the nation’s prisons, jails and juvenile facilities.The strong opposition to solitary confinement is primarily based on questions about the belief that use of such practices is a clear human rights violation. Before we ... Read More »
NASW Participates in Roundtable on Justice System Reforms
On December 19, 2013, President Obama announced his list presidential pardons of persons in the criminal justice system. In addition to the 13 pardons issued, President Obama commuted the prison terms of eight people convicted on federal crack cocaine charges. Most significantly, the president’s stated reason for his decision is that these individuals were punished under laws that permitted unfair ... Read More »