Social Workers in Forensic Settings: A Brief Caveat!

Karl Menninger (1968) famously criticized what he deemed the “cold war between lawyers and psychiatrists” in lamenting the criminalization of people plagued by mental health challenges. Social workers in forensic settings are often faced with a similar burden. They are often working under a system whose main priority is punishment and control, often reducing mitigating factors such as mental health, poverty, economics, and various other social determinants of behavior in favor of a paradigm that trumps individual behavior [and punishment].

Social workers are trained to meet “people where they are at”—meaning a holistic examination of the individual, inclusive of all relevant mitigating factors, in weighing an intervention. This social work value is often in contradiction to the American ideal of meritocracy, which assumes that opportunity is indeed equal, and success, or the lack thereof, can be simply reduced to a choice.