Literature Review of incarcerated or have criminal charges pending

Some of my Students are Prisoners: Issues and Dilemmas for Social Work Educators Beth R. Crisp & Philip Gillingham

Higher education recruitment principles and procedures which seek to redress social

exclusion have inadvertently resulted in the authors discovering that some of their

students are incarcerated. Notwithstanding the important logistical issues which may

emerge as a consequence of accepting prisoners into a programme of social work

education, it would seem that the inclusion of prisoners is symbolic of a fundamental

difference in philosophy with a risk management stance which expects that social work

educators act as gatekeepers to the profession, especially in respect of students with

criminal convictions.

Keywords: Social Work Education; Social Work Students; Offenders; Prisoners; Social

Inclusion; Risk Management

Introduction

The related questions of who is fit and proper to be a social worker, and

consequently, who is suitable to undertake a course of study leading to qualification

as a social worker, are perennial issues for a range of stakeholders in social work

education. In some countries, including the US, UK and New Zealand, the desire to

restrict who can practise as a social worker has resulted in systems of licensing or

registration of the workforce. In the UK, registration has been further extended to

include students in recognised programmes of qualifying studies in social work. In

stark contrast to these overseas developments, the authors, who teach social work at

Deakin University, which is one of the leading providers of distance education in

Australia, have discovered that an inadvertent outcome of offering a social work

degree in distance education mode is that some prisoners are choosing to study social

work.

Correspondence to: Beth R. Crisp, School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, 1 Gheringhap Street,

Waterfront Campus, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Beth R. Crisp & Philip Gillingham, Deakin University, Australia.

Social Work Education Vol. 27, No. 3, April 2008, pp. 307–317

ISSN 0261-5479 print/1470-1227 online # 2008 The Board of Social Work Education DOI: 10.1080/02615470701380360

In this paper, after describing the key features of the Bachelor of Social Work

(BSW) degree at Deakin, we will explore arguments for and against allowing current

prisoners to become social work students using two seemingly competing

contemporary discourses that are shaping social work, namely social inclusion and

risk management.

Social Work Education at Deakin

Despite being a profession which claims actively to be about promoting social

inclusion, social work education in Australia has traditionally been somewhat socially

exclusive. Prior to the early 1990s, there were relatively few opportunities to study

social work which did not require full-time study on a metropolitan campus. The last

15 years have seen an enormous growth in social work education, with an increase

from 13 to 23 providers, with the majority of these new courses in regional centres.

However, an even more fundamental change has been the introduction of off-campus

(distance education) programmes, and there are now a number of Australian

universities offering the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) fully or partially in this

mode of delivery. The BSW is the approved entry level qualification for social

workers in Australia.

Deakin University is one of the accredited providers of the BSW by distance mode

and Deakin’s BSW is an undergraduate degree which requires the equivalent of four

years of full-time study. Deakin places a high priority on offering educational

opportunities to potential students who demonstrate aptitude for university study

but due to various reasons require a flexible mode of delivery in order to access

higher education. Hence, students can study either full- or part-time and in on- or

off-campus modes, with the possibility of changing mode of study as their needs

change. However, there is no difference in academic expectations of students between

different modes of study. All students are expected to attend an intensive practice

skills workshop for a few days at the Waterfront campus of the university in the

second and third years of the programme, and to satisfactorily complete a 70-day

placement in each of the final two years of the course. The two placements must be in

different agencies and settings according to the guidelines of the Australian

Association of Social Workers (AASW) which accredits all BSW programmes in

Australia (AASW, 2000). Agencies may request that students undergo police checks

before being accepted for placement, but not all agencies require these.

In respect of its selection procedures, progression requirements and destinations of

graduates, the BSW at Deakin is not dissimilar from other many BSW programmes

across Australia where equal opportunities legislation imposes a duty on universities

not to discriminate against either current or prospective students according to age,

gender, race, disability, sexual orientation or criminal background (Shardlow, 2000).

Students are selected on the basis of their written applications and supporting

documentation, and do not attend for interview as part of the selection process. In

addition to students enrolled in the BSW, it is possible for other Deakin students to

take some of the introductory level social work units as electives in their degrees.

308 B. Crisp & P. Gillingham

Some of these students subsequently apply to transfer from their existing course of

study to the BSW.

At Deakin, as in most Australian schools of social work, academic grounds are the

only reason that a university may terminate a student’s training, although

‘unsuitable’ students (an issue for which there is no consensus) may be encouraged

to drop out (Ryan et al., 1997). Consequently, although one can be sure that holders

of the BSW in Australia have completed the requirements for the degree, it is,

ultimately left to prospective employers to determine the professional suitability of

new graduates as there is no professional registration of social workers in Australia.

Moreover, although many BSW graduates are in fact employed in the human services

sector in direct service work, the majority of them do not take up posts with the title

of ‘social worker’ (Hawkins et al., 2000).

It is theoretically possible for enrolled students to be prisoners at some stages in

their studies. As social work educators, we often only become aware that an

individual student is in prison when their imprisonment conflicts with some course

requirement and alternative arrangements are sought. Examples include a request for

a deferred exam due to prison authorities preventing a student from attending the

prison education centre on the day of the exam or in the days immediately prior to

an exam, or prisoners requesting hard copies of information to be posted to them as

they are unable to access the Internet and access the university’s online information

system which is a key mechanism for providing updates to students during the

semester.

We have yet to deal with the issue of a serving prisoner seeking to undertake a

placement, but expect that this might emerge in the future and we have recognised

that the requirements of the AASW would not allow for an Australian social work

student to complete two placements within the same type of setting such as a prison.

Furthermore, there is not a consensus among the various stakeholders associated with

the delivery of social work education at Deakin as to the desirability of prisoners

completing one placement within the prison setting, if in fact the prison authorities

would agree to the placement and suitable arrangements could be made for

supervision. On the one hand, it could be argued that if non-prisoner students are

accepted as students on placement within a prison welfare service, is it not

discrimination to disallow prisoner students the same experience? On the other hand,

there may be concerns as to how being a student on placement affects a prisoner’s

relationships with both the prison system and with his or her fellow prisoners.

Professional dilemmas, such as confidentiality and potentially conflicting interests,

are likely to arise as problems. The potential for the placements not to be completed

either because the prisoner is released or moved to another prison, must also be

considered.

Although several staff involved in the Deakin BSW can recount instances involving

incarcerated students, there are no systematic records about such students, but it is

thought most likely to have included a very small number of students over the decade

since the course began in 1994, with some students having had contact with multiple

staff. However, a recent letter received by one of the authors in her role as selection

Social Work Education 309

officer, would suggest that the prospect of studying for a BSW appeals to some

prisoners. The writer identified himself as a serving prisoner, noted his release date,

and indicated that he had become interested in studying social work after looking at

the learning materials which a fellow prisoner was studying. In addition to requesting

information on applying for a place in the course, he included his attempt at

answering one of the activities in the learning materials for our first year Introduction

to Social Work unit.

Social Inclusion

It has been argued that imprisonment is the ultimate form of social exclusion (Smith

& Stewart, 1998). Moreover, persons who are at greatest risk of experiencing social

exclusion as a result of factors such as poverty, lack of education, unemployment

and/or being a member of a racial minority, are disproportionately likely to have

become prisoners (Mair & May, 1997; Smith & Stewart, 1998). In Australia, this is

particularly an issue for indigenous Australians (Wilson, 1997). So extensive and

enduring is their exclusion, that many offenders accept it as a ‘fact of life’ (Smith &

Stewart, 1998). Consequently, it has been proposed that promoting social inclusion is

essential, not only for reintegrating former prisoners into society, but to reduce the

likelihood of reoffending (Clements, 2004; Smith & Stewart, 1998).

One of the most common methods of promoting social inclusion among prisoners

is through the provision of education and training. While this is frequently at the

level of basic literacy training, some prisoners are afforded the opportunity of taking

degree level studies. Research indicates that those who undertake studies while

imprisoned are not only more employable and have significantly higher incomes than

those were not involved in a prison education programme (Fabelo, 2002), but also

show lower rates of reoffending in the first few years post-release (Chappell, 2004;

Taylor, 2002).

While degree level studies in the social sciences are pursued by many prisoner

students, we have only been able to find documentation of one other course of social

work education which has included prisoners amongst its students. In this course, in

which the students were all inmates of an American prison, a local college arranged

for prisoners to undertake all aspects of social work education, including attending

classes and participating in supervised practice learning within the prison setting. For

practice learning, prisoner students were placed in either a pre-release counselling

programme or as peer counsellors to a ‘therapeutic community’ which had been

established within the prison. Non-prisoner social work students were also placed in

both of these settings and assessment of both groups of students was on the same

criteria (Fortuna & Beckerman, 1981).

The implicit assumption in the developing opportunities for prisoners to qualify as

social workers seems to have been about promoting social inclusion. The authors

raise no philosophical concerns or ethical issues about teaching social work to

prisoners, despite the fact such graduates may have restricted opportunities to be

employed as social work practitioners. Rather, Fortuna & Beckerman’s (1981)

310 B. Crisp & P. Gillingham

concerns seem to have been overwhelmingly around the practicalities of providing a

social work education within the prison setting. They found, not surprisingly, that

prisoner students had more limited exposure to services in the wider community

than did non-prisoner students, and furthermore had only limited opportunities to

develop these. Although visiting other agencies is a common experience for many

social work students on placement, this is not an option for prisoner students.

A more critical issue reported by Fortuna & Beckerman (1981) was the seeming

difficulty in developing critical reflection skills among prisoner students:

Prisoners are generally on guard in their interpersonal relationships. They are anxious to project an image and behave in a manner that facilitates early parole, and at least makes prison life less stressful. This undermines the development of critical, experimental, and risk-taking behaviour. The exchange of information between student inmates and field supervisors is limited, and confidentiality rarely exists. Instead the inmate often protects his image and reputation, giving out information that cannot be used against him. The result is that institutional norms often undermine the value of the student/field supervisor relationship. (Fortuna & Beckerman, 1981, p. 172)

Whether prisoner students would be more open with field supervisors who were

not employees of the prison system is unknown.

In a subsequent paper, Beckerman & Fortuna (1987) compared a class of prisoner

students with social work students at a local college on a range of values. While some

significant differences were found, the authors concluded that ‘The differences which

emerged between the two groups of students very often were in the strength of their

views not in the direction of them’ (p. 30). The authors concluded that both groups

demonstrated values which were consistent with the values of the social work

profession.

Risk Management

A culture of risk management has permeated social work provision over the last

decade or so, and is now one of the most prominent discourses influencing

professional practice (Cree & Wallace, 2005). In particular, it has been argued that

social work agencies have a duty of care to ensure that service users are not placed at

an unacceptable risk of harm from others (Parsloe, 1999) including social workers

(Burke, 1999):

Within the field of social services, there is an increased expectation that risk should be controlled so that vulnerable children and adults are protected. When social work or health agencies fail in this endeavour, the public outcry is characterised by hurt and anger. The underlying message is clear: ‘‘We trusted you, and you let us down’’. (Cree & Wallace, 2005, p. 115)

Over the past two decades, several writers from both the UK and US have debated

the risks associated with employing social workers who have criminal records and,

consequently, the appropriateness of allowing persons who have a criminal record to

participate in a programme of education leading to qualification as a social worker.

Social Work Education 311

Hence, notwithstanding the key aim of social work education being to prepare

students for professional practice, course providers have often been expected to act as

‘gatekeepers’ whose task it is to screen out those unsuitable for professional practice

(Moore & Unwin, 1991).

In North America there has been considerable disagreement amongst social work

educators as to the suitability of applicants with criminal records (Cobb & Jordan,

1989). However, despite stated concerns as to the appropriateness of admitting

students who have a conviction to a programme of social work education, very few

American schools of social work include a police check at admission (Gibbs, 1994).

One study of schools of social work in the US found only 5.8% considered criminal

convictions in determining suitability for social work education (Miller & Koerin,

1998). Elsewhere it has been established that social work programmes which screen

students for professional suitability at admission do not necessarily have any fewer

students whom are subsequently identified as ‘inappropriate’ for practice by

academic staff (Peterman & Blake, 1986). Therefore, while some US educators have

argued that admission of persons with a criminal conviction should occur on a case-

by-case basis (Scott & Zeiger, 2000), others have argued vehemently against this. For

example:

A felony conviction is a social sanction, a form of social control to enforce society’s standards. People convicted of a felony lose certain rights, both immediately (e.g. the right to free movement by being jailed) as well as for the long-term (e.g. the right to own a gun). Denial of admission to professional education is simply one aspect of this social sanction. Social work education programs are part of the legal and societal milieu and have a responsibility to assure consistency in the enforcement of sanctions. (Magen & Emerman, 2000, p. 401)

Magen & Emerman (2000) justify their stand, citing statistics that approximately

two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested on serious charges within three years of

release. As staff involved in student selection are unlikely to have access to

sophisticated actuarial tools which have demonstrated a significantly better than

chance ability to predict violent or other offending behaviours in the future

(Mossman, 1994, 1995), this is likely to lead to very conservative selection procedures

which may screen out potentially suitable applicants.

An alternative perspective has been proposed from Scotland, where applicants with

a criminal conviction are not automatically banned from commencing social work

training but nevertheless need to convince representatives of the profession of their

professional suitability:

Despite the lack of a sound research base for decision-making, programme providers have devised selector guidance about what might constitute a problematic candidate offence profile; but this guidance is neither routinely published nor made available to candidates. There is no discernible evidence of a widespread public debate about what should constitute a problematic offending profile and, in any event, there may not be a universally acceptable one. Social work is diverse. Some agency interests may be willing to accommodate offence histories that others would want to avoid; the consequence of agency philosophy and political considerations perhaps. For that reason, the application of a lowest

312 B. Crisp & P. Gillingham

common denominator offending profile could work against the human rights interests of aspiring social workers and, more significantly, the users and agencies in need of their services. (Perry, 2004, p. 1006)

Recent research at the University of Edinburgh has indicated that the introduction

of a requirement to disclose criminal convictions on entry to a course of study which

qualifies one to be a social worker has resulted in a decrease of students with criminal

convictions applying for a career in social work (Perry, 2004). However, it is

important to recognise that criminal conviction checks identify only crimes for which

students have been convicted or there is a formal record of a charge or warning.

Many offences are never recorded (e.g. civil offences) and the Edinburgh study found

fewer than 3% of social work students responding to an anonymous questionnaire

admitted to having committed none of a list of 11 offence types. The majority of

students self reported having committed traffic offences, theft and drunkenness, and

more than one-third reported having committed offences such as possession of

drugs, fraud, excise (smuggling) or breach of the peace (Perry, 2004).

A consequence of policies which rigidly exclude offenders from entry into social

work education can be an implicit designation of social work students and offenders

as two distinct categories. Offenders are people who social work students have as

clients (Pomeroy et al., 2004, 1999). As such, they are perceived in the category of

‘other’ and a mutually exclusive set of persons to social work students. And prisons

are somewhere social work students visit to gain practice experience rather than

places of residence for some social work students (Alexander & Brown, 2000; Noble &

Severson, 1995; Severson, 1999).

Even if persons with convictions can be prevented from commencing in social

work education, there is still the potential for offending behaviour to occur prior to

graduation. Any criteria for refusing progression of students already enrolled in a

course of social work education, should, as far as possible, be clearly articulated

(Cole, 1991). However, it tends to be easier for universities to terminate students for

failing to meet academic criteria than for behaviours outside the university. Yet there

may nevertheless be an expectation that programmes of social work education will

not provide credentials for practitioners whose personal conduct is considered

unethical and hence unsuitable for a social worker (Cole & Lewis, 1993), particularly

given that social workers are frequently placed in positions of trust with people who

may be in states of heightened vulnerability.

If gatekeeping has not occurred at admission, then a crucial point can be at the

point of field placement. It has been argued that social work programmes have an

obligation not only to any potential clients with whom a student may have contact,

but also to the staff of agencies in which they are placed (Mossman, 1995).

Furthermore, many agencies require students to undertake some form of police check

or criminal convictions disclosure either prior to commencement of a placement or

prior to unsupervised client contact. It is then the agency’s prerogative as to whether

to accept or reject a student for whom convictions, or in some cases, allegations, are

identified as part of this process. As field agencies will typically accept only those

students for whom they consider the risks involved as negligible or non-existent

Social Work Education 313

(Gelman & Wardell, 1988), the need to ensure that placements can be secured for

students with criminal convictions has sometimes been used to justify screening of

offenders at the point of selection (Perry, 2004).

In seeking to place students in practice learning settings, social work educators may

presume the presence of certain agency policies, though these in fact may not exist

(Miller & Rodwell, 1997). Agencies may in fact be more open to placing students with

criminal convictions than is the perception. In one study which involved interviews

with the persons responsible for making employment decisions once the results of

police checks were made available in all 64 local authority social work departments in

England and Wales, the majority were theoretically willing to appoint staff who had

convictions including possession of cannabis (63), burglary of a house (56), actual

bodily harm (55), indecent assault (48), burglary for animal rights (47) and

shoplifting twice (42) (Smith, 1999). Moreover, six of those interviewed would have

been prepared to appoint a social worker who had a record of indecent assault on a

child to a position involving direct working with children (Smith, 1999). This stance

recognises that in some settings, a prior criminal record is not a barrier to being an

effective service provider (Abram & Hoge, 2003).

Implications for Social Work Education Worldwide

This paper has emerged from the authors’ discovery that seeking to provide higher

education to individuals and groups who have traditionally been excluded from such

provision, has inadvertently resulted in prisoners being admitted to a course of study,

completion of which would qualify them to practise as a social worker. While clearly

this raises questions for us personally as providers of a programme of social work

education, this also raises questions for social work educators across the globe and we

recognise there are major disparities between countries concerning positions and

practices in relation to students who are incarcerated and/or have been convicted of

criminal offences. The authors are not advocating for a particular position, rather,

given that this issue is likely to become more important as increasing numbers of

students are being enrolled in distance modes of social work education, that there

needs to be a debate. Key issues in this debate will be the extent to which social work

educators see themselves as the ‘gatekeepers’ to the profession (possibly with

reference to social inclusion/exclusion) and how that role is carried out (possibly with

reference to risk management).

It would seem that while often quick to embrace the opportunities to promote

social inclusion, social work educators frequently find ourselves policing entry and

maintaining the exclusiveness of the profession. While such actions are invariably

done with the best possible motives, we risk further marginalisation of some

populations. We suspect that some agencies which employ ‘peers’, such as some drug

and alcohol services, support groups for sex workers, and offender resettlement

programmes, would prefer to employ a former prisoner who has ‘been there’ and has

insights into their clients’ situations on the basis of their own experience over

professionally qualified social workers who have no criminal record. If this is in fact

314 B. Crisp & P. Gillingham

correct, not allowing persons who have criminal records to become social workers

may result in some client groups being denied access to qualified professionals.

Perhaps even more importantly, a blanket ruling that prisoners or persons with

criminal records should be denied the opportunity to qualify as a social worker,

suggests that as a profession, we don’t really believe in the potential for rehabilitation,

despite the fact that many criminal justice social workers are employed by

programmes where this is a key aim. Furthermore, an unbending stance fails to

recognise that throughout the world, individuals are routinely imprisoned on charges

that may or may not exist, and that even bona fide criminal justice systems are

regularly found to have made mistakes in convicting persons later found to have been

innocent of charges.

By suggesting that there may be a place within social work education for some

prisoners, we are not, however, advocating that any prisoner should be able to be

employed as a social worker. Indeed, we recognise that including prisoners amongst

our student population is problematic, and we would not want to place vulnerable

service users at risk. In the meantime, now that we have prisoners amongst our

student population, there are certain practical implications that we are likely to have

to face in the future if we continue to find that some of our students are prisoners,

especially if they are still prisoners when they are due to attend compulsory on-

campus workshops or commence placement.

Finally, there is not necessarily a consensus among social work educators at Deakin

as to the appropriateness of this and the extent of any concessions that should be

offered to enable prisoners to complete a social work degree. Nevertheless, these

issues demand that we consider whether overcoming social exclusion merely

underpins the content we teach or whether we re-examine our own beliefs and

practices concerning both the provision of social work education and who is deemed

fit to graduate with a social work degree.

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