Why Prison Reform Needs Social Workers
Why Prison Reform Needs Social Workers Alexander Brown, MBA, PHD, LCSW, and John Maki, JD When most of us think about prisons, we tend to imagine them merely as places we send people convicted of crimes. While prisons serve this purpose, they have also become a form of treatment for a significant number of our most troubled, mentally ill, and vulnerable citizens, most of whom are released and returned to their communities. Here are the numbers: over the past forty years, Illinois' adult prison population has increased by about 700%, going from around 6,000 to over 48,000 adult inmates and about 1,000 juveniles today. While many factors have contributed to this growth, drug policies and trends in mental health have played a particularly important role. As elected officials increased penalties for drug-based offenses and slashed state mental health budgets, they created laws and policies that have sent an increasing number of mentally ill and drug-addicted people to our state p...
