Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty

Abstract

Abstract Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty aims to prepare undergraduate and graduate students to take an active role in the contemporary death penalty discourse in the United States by providing key insights from professionals who are engaged as legal, forensic, academic, and social work experts. In this textbook, contributing authors write accessibly from their own experiences and expertise in death penalty cases and related social issues from a critical, social justice, and human rights perspective—all intended to better inform the burgeoning social work and criminal justice professional. To this end, the present textbook is comprised of three sections: Criminal Justice Considerations, Sociopolitical Considerations, and Applied Social Work Considerations. Across the three sections, each chapter provides explicit implications for the social work profession in the criminal justice setting. Examples of the various roles that social work professionals can and do take up related to the death penalty, including working directly with death sentenced persons and their families; participating in mitigation work; contributing to the field of research devoted to the intersections of mental health and the criminal justice system; as clinically licensed social workers, by engaging in the critical discourse that is being had between the psychiatric and psychological professions and the legal profession when death eligibility hinges on a clinical determination; and, finally, using social advocacy and policy practice to take up the death penalty from a social justice framework.