SW 628 - Social Work in Prisons and Community Reintergration

3 Credit(s)

The Social Work in Prisons and Community Reintegration course prepares social workers for working with people who are currently or formerly incarcerated. Class participants will consider ethical, professional, and personal dilemmas that may arise in this work and ways to maintain social work values while working in settings with conflicting values. Topics include oppression and intersectionality and their impact on certain
groups’ likelihood of becoming incarcerated and the social problem of mass incarceration. Practice issues include identifying and critiquing evidence-based practices with people formerly or currently incarcerated and using trauma-informed and restorative justice approaches as innovative social work practices in criminal justice settings. Emphasis is placed on social work’s role in helping to reform places of incarceration and
reintegration so they are more responsive to the needs of people who are currently or formerly incarcerated.