Naming and Sharing Power in Prison Workshop Settings

ABSTRACT

Aiming both to trouble and give life to ‘social work values’, three outside facilitators in a restorative justice project, which is held inside a prison, grapple with the many open questions and ongoing dilemmas that arise in collaborations with our incarcerated colleagues. We begin by exploring institutionalised control within the field of social work, acknowledging the many ways in which social workers can enact bureaucracy through the performance of expertise, creating hierarchies that undermine the self-determination of our clients. We then describe our own attempts to be reflexive practitioners, striving to be egalitarian and collaborative. We step back from our own roles as ‘outside experts’, as we allow ourselves to be guided by the leadership of our colleagues, who created and now lead the workshops. As we become more deeply involved in this work, new questions about ownership and collegiality arise.

KEYWORDS:

• Restorative justice
• prison
• incarceration
• power
• social work

Acknowledgements

With gratitude to all members of the Steering Committee: those whose words are included here, those who provided thoughtful feedback on this particular essay, and those who serve, more generally, as wise guides to our work – Aki Bivins, Charles Boyd, Shaun Campbell, Richard Gross, Gary Jackson, Robert LaBarr, Janice Lion, Fred Magondu, Marco Maldonado, Anthony Marqusee, Benny Lee Ortega, Michael Riccio, Felix Rosado, Lawrence Stromberg and Carmen Woods.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Margo Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Social Work and Director of Undergraduate Social Work Education at Widener University. Her research interests are focused on macro social work practice, child and family well-being, and experiences of people who are incarcerated. Her current practice focuses on engaging people in prison, as well as those formerly incarcerated, as colleagues and leaders in addressing mass incarceration and its effects.

Anne Dalke, who taught English and Gender Studies at Bryn Mawr College for 35 years, now works with readers and writers in Philadelphia county jails and Pennsylvania state prisons. A prison abolitionist and Quaker with a particular interest in resistant teaching practices, Anne is the author of Teaching to Learn/Learning to Teach: Meditations on the Classroom (2002); co-editor, with Barbara Dixson, of Minding the Light: Essays in Friendly Pedagogy (2004); and co-author, with Jody Cohen, of Steal This Classroom: Teaching and Learning Unbound (2020).

Barb Toews is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at University of Washington Tacoma. Her scholarship focuses on restorative justice theory and practice, especially as it relates to the architecture and design of justice buildings. She holds a PhD in Social Work and Social Research from Bryn Mawr College.