As the liberal world order faces destabilizing change, the prison/crime industrial complex remains a stronghold of state and corporate coercive power. People are locked up in the US in numbers that are unprecedented in our own history and internationally, an overwhelming proportion of those ensnared are people of color and poor whites from abandoned communities; and a confluence of economic, political, and ideological investments block reform. While social work research related to the criminal justice system is increasing—particularly on the topic of reentry services—we noted a lack of current scholarship on prisons from a radical social work perspective. To address this gap, Journal of Progressive Human Services (JPHS) put out a call for articles that describe efforts to respond to the social, economic, and health needs of people in and leaving correctional institutions in ways that challenge dominant paradigms and power structures. The aim of this special issue was to examine how radical social workers can build empowering collaborations across stakeholder groups impacted by the criminal justice system to push for redistribution of social and economic resources.
We chose to use the phrase “radical social work” to reconnect to JPHS’ post-Marxist roots. Marxist and neo-Marxist theories have influenced the social work profession since its inception (Reisch & Andrews, Citation2002). Settlement House workers, Rank and Filers, Welfare Rights Movement organizers, and founders of the Bertha Kappa Reynolds Society all recognized capitalism as the driving force behind poverty, exploitation, and suffering. Likewise, JPHS’ predecessor, the Catalyst: A Socialist Journal of the Social Services, was founded to provide a socialist voice within social work scholarship. Marx and his progeny continue to bring our focus to material disparities and their relationship to power disparities, both on the societal level as well as among social workers and the individuals, families, and communities with whom we work. We looked for articles clearly connected to a critical perspective not only on the criminal justice system but also on its place within capitalist structures and their supporting ideologies.
We include both structuralist and post-structuralist theories within the definition of radical. While structuralists draw our attention to ideology, or ideas that mask social structures to benefit the capitalist class, post-structuralists focus on discourse, or constructions of meaning that discipline us all within a complex constellation of power relationships. Especially relevant for social workers is the post-structural concept of the “psychological complex” or “the networks of ideas about the nature of human beings, their perfectibility, the reasons for their behavior, and the way they may be classified, selected and controlled” (Parton, Citation1991, p. 7). It is crucial for social workers to pay attention to the way that such discourses operate as modes of social control and to understand how we challenge them (Chambon, Irving, & Epstein, Citation1999). Given the historical reliance on psychological discourse to justify the existence and structure of correctional facilities, and the current role of social workers as mental health providers in the system, we thought including critical discourse analysis in our definition of radical could be useful for this issue.
My interest in the need for radical change in our correctional systems comes from over 20 years of education and legal work in US jails and prison. A set of questions inspired my decision to curate this special issue: Why, with the stark injustices of our system today, have we not seen a rebirth of the Prisoner’s Rights Movement of the 1960s–1970s? What are the challenges faced by those attempting to create structural change within and in partnership with people living in our correctional institutions, and what role could social workers play in overcoming those challenges? After decades of ceding our historic role in prisons to criminal justice professionals, social workers are coming back inside, mostly to provide crisis management and mental health services. Now that our foot is back in the door, what can we do to push for systemic change from within? The authors in this special issue help us understand both the need for change and the strategies we can use to disrupt the system. Specifically, they explore ways to reframe and restructure the service models we support, the partnerships we create, and the policy agendas we promote.
The issue begins with an article by Cox and Augustine who provide a thorough overview of the flaws of US correctional systems, as well as the multiple ways social workers can be involved in creating change. They provide detailed information on the ways prisons further marginalize oppressed social groups and the historical, economic, and political forces that make this oppression possible. They also describe efforts of advocates around the country, including prisoners, their families, community organizations, and legislators, who are working to reform the system. They discuss the role radical social work practitioners and educators can play, defining it from a neo-Marxist perspective as practice “based on the belief that social problems and consequent individuals’ problems are rooted in the political economy (specifically unregulated capitalism)…” They propose that social workers may face limits in their paid employment in how radical they can be and may need to engage in volunteer activities in order to do work that can truly transform the system. They offer a list of topics around which communities and social movements can engage and conclude with concrete strategies for pursuing change from multiple angles. This article is a comprehensive roadmap of need to, challenges of, and opportunities for creating radical change within and beyond the criminal justice system.
Next, Barrenger, Stanhope, and Atterbury help us get deeper into how alternative models of service provision can address forces of both symbolic and material oppression within the system, particularly for persons living with mental illness. They bring our attention to another injustice of the system—the exclusive use of the medical model to explain and address the high rates of mental illness among people in jails and prisons, which perpetuates disempowering hierarchies and ignores material inequalities. Using qualitative data, they explore the impact of peer counseling in prison from the perspective of the peer specialists who have a history of both mental illness and incarceration. This model is radical in the way that it challenges criminal justice and mental health discourses that perpetuate injustice in the system and addresses material inequality by providing meaningful employment opportunities. They locate the opportunity for systemic transformation in the new narratives and possibilities for action created by peer specialists.
Finally, Kennedy and Mennicke focus on the specific forms of oppressions faced by women in prisons and the kinds of services women identify as needed and useful. This approach contributes to our understanding of radical practice because in today’s correctional climate, opportunities for prisoners to voice their perspective and set the agenda are limited or even nonexistent. The services and programs that are offered inside are dominated by outsider agendas. Many institutions require that all programs use “evidence-based” models. Voluntary organizations—religious, arts-based, educational—come in with a preplanned program and a preset idea of what people in prison need. The women participants in Kennedy and Mennicke’s study lay bare the role of trauma in their lives before, during, and after incarceration and the ways they were silenced by a patriarchal system that does not value women’s voices. The authors frame the failure of the system to develop gender-responsive and trauma-informed approaches as a social justice issue and offer strategies for transformative change.
We thank our authors and readers for their willingness to engage with a system whose size, reach, and level of destructiveness require us to put on our big-vision glasses and our all-weather boots on the ground. We hope this special issue inspires additional conversation on how social workers can partner with people in jails, prisons, reentry programs, communities, courtrooms, and legislative halls to identify, route out, and replace the tendrils of late capitalism that shape our correctional systems.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
References
- Chambon, A., Irving, A., & Epstein, L. (1999). Reading Foucault for social work. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
- Parton, N. (1991). Governing the family: Child care, child protection, and the state. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
- Reisch, M., & Andrews, J. (2002). The road not taken: A history of radical social work. New York, NY: Routledge.