Reentry Program and Social Work Education: Training the Next Generation of Criminal Justice Social Workers

Social work plays a marginal role in opposing the trend of mass incarceration and high rates of recidivism, and social work education offers limited opportunities for students to specialize in working with people who are currently or were previously incarcerated. How to train students of social work to work against mass-incarceration is still challenging.

The authors devised and implemented an in-school social service agency devoted to working with people pre and post release from a prison system. The agency is a field practicum setting where interested students study and practice reentry work. In this article, the authors describe and assess the educational merit of this in-school agency.

Findings from surveys of students and alumni suggest that the program attained its educational goals of connecting classroom education to practice experience and training students for careers in the criminal justice system. The authors also discuss pending challenges.

The experience of the Goldring Reentry Initiative suggests that by developing their own social work agencies, the authors may be able to heighten their students educational experience and expand their contribution to social work practice broadly.