Improving criminal legal social work education with social justice tenets: A convergent-parallel mixed-methods study

Background: The history of punishment through correctional control dates back to the colonization of the United States. Today, many policies and programs continue to exist that criminalize and punish substance use, distribution, manufacturing, and trafficking; sex trades; Black communities; and unhoused people. Although states have enacted decriminalization and decarceration policies and prison populations have substantially declined, the effects of the War on Drugs continue to harm and oppress system-impacted individuals. As a profession that seeks to fulfill social justice, social workers can exercise their knowledge, values, skills, and affective processes to meet multifaceted needs, restore well-being, and address harm. However, limited knowledge exists on criminal legal social work education. This dissertation fills this gap by aligning the profession’s mission of social justice; infusing social justice tenets with anti-racism, anti-oppression, and anti-discrimination; and providing opportunities to educate students and practitioners for social work practice in direct and indirect criminal legal settings. Methods: I conducted a convergent-parallel mixed-methods study. In this dissertation, three articles were developed. The first article contained a scoping review with a comprehensive search strategy of criminal legal social work content and the application of qualitative deductive content analysis. The second article collected data from BSW and MSW Program Directors with a 35-item quantitative survey that collected individual, program, and institutional demographics; identified factors that benefitted and burdened the program’s ability to incorporate criminal legal content; compiled criminal legal curricular offerings and topics offered by participants’ programs; and investigated participants’ perspectives of criminal legal issues and initiatives. The third article centered Nicotera’s (2019) seven tenets of social justice for the social work profession in the construction of a theoretical framework on criminal legal social work content. This article combined the results from the first two articles and recent studies, applied grounded theory methodology and a critical realist lens, and mapped recommendations for explicit and implicit criminal legal social work content. Results: Results from the three articles indicated that there was limited criminal legal content offered to social work students and practitioners, both in BSW and MSW programs and in continuing education programs. Thus, the working theoretical framework and curricular recommendations, as presented in Chapter 5, can guide social work BSW, MSW, and continuing education programs toward infusing criminal legal content into the explicit and implicit curricula. Discussion: The proposed theoretical framework and curricular recommendations for criminal legal social work education has the potential to advance the preparation of social work students and practitioners. I contend that social work educators acknowledge the structural racism and classism embedded in the criminal legal system, the harm of the criminalization of substances against Black and economically-distressed Americans, and the inadequacy of current criminal legal policies and programs. Additionally, I encourage social work educators to examine their explicit and implicit curricula and infuse criminal legal justice content throughout the core social work curriculum. With the findings from this dissertation, the social work profession has the ability to learn and apply multifaceted approaches that move the criminal legal system toward reform and abolition.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Social Work

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Carrington, Allison Avanell

Contributors dc:contributor

• Windsor, Liliane
• Smith, Douglas C
• Lindsey, Brenda
• Maschi, Tina

• Social Work
• Social Work Education
• Social Justice
• Social Justice Theory
• Criminal Justice
• Criminal Legal

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Allison Avanell Carrington

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121917

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121917