The Importance Of Criminal Justice Social Work

Nearly 2.3 million people are held inside of local jails, state, or federal prisons on a given day. While a whopping 24 million people go through the criminal justice system each year, another 7.2 million are under some sort of criminal justice supervision (Pettus-Davis, 2012, Pg.3). Those numbers are absolutely staggering and with all those people inside the system there needs to be people on the outside giving them a voice and the proper help they so desperately need. That is why there are criminal justice social workers. This paper will discuss why criminal justice social workers are needed, what they do, and what future social workers can do to improve this field. When someone goes to jail or prison and gets out who’s to say they are

There are definitely not enough social workers for the amount of people within the system and that causes issues and problems. Due to the shortage of workers that causes those people who are offenders to just sit and not receive any help while in jail or after they get out. That in turn causes a ripple effect and causes more of these people to reoffend once they are out because they have no resources, money, or people to help them cope with the differences they are facing. If these people have the proper help, then it is less likely they will reoffend, saving money and room in the jails and prisons. The big question here is how can the next generation of social workers help with these problems? “The social work profession has exerted considerable influence in the shaping of U.S. criminal justice policy and practice, including key involvement in the development of reformatories and prisons,” says Roberts, Ivanoff, Tripodi, and Gilmer (2013, pg. 96). Social workers have a large impact on these prisons and sometimes how the prisons themselves are