Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work

by

Noor Toraif, Alison Frisella

• LAST MODIFIED: 23 September 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389678-0338

Introduction

Abolitionist social work is a theoretical and practical orientation which seeks to end the carceral logics, practices, and discourses that pervade the field of social work. Aligned with the broader project of abolishing all carceral institutions, abolitionist social work recognizes that these institutions function as systems of social control, designed to maintain the interlocking oppressions of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. In place of carceral institutions, abolitionists call for non-punitive, community-based resources and strategies that meaningfully redress the harms caused by these interlocking systems of oppression. Abolitionist social work is particularly concerned with the field’s direct collaboration with and deference to the police and the criminal legal system, as well as social work’s role in family separation and surveillance as its primary means of ensuring child welfare. Abolitionist social workers therefore call to abolish institutions of policing, surveillance, and punishment, instead developing new ways to ensure that children, families, and communities have the resources they need, while also working to dismantle the systems of oppression which create these needs.

Works in Non-Academic Outlets

Meiners, et al. 2022; Felber 2020; Critical Resistance 2020; and Critical Resistance n.d. are publicly accessible articles and activist resources addressing common misconceptions regarding abolition as a general theoretical framework and practice. Anti-Racism Daily Team 2022 articulates the carceral history of social work, while Rasmussen and James 2020 and Becker 2021 go further in advocating for social workers to assume an abolitionist orientation. Asgarian 2023 and Roberts 2022 extend this approach specifically to the child welfare system.

• Anti-Racism Daily Team. 5 December 2022. The complicated history of social work. Anti-Racism Daily.

  Provides a brief and useful history of the racist, settler colonial, and eugenicist origins of the social work profession, showing that social work cannot be used to solve systemic issues, and that it advocates only for reform rather than abolition.

• Asgarian, R. 3 October 2023. The case for child welfare abolition. In These Times.

  A thorough overview of current arguments for the abolition of the child welfare system, synthesizing much of the academic literature cited under Carceral Practices: The Child Welfare System.

• Becker, C. 19 October 2021. We social workers should remember our values and stop policing. Filter Magazine.

  Op-ed which highlights the key arguments in favor of an anti-carceral social work practice.

• Critical Resistance. n.d. What is the PIC? What is abolition?. Critical Resistance.

  Accessible and brief explanation of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and abolition, accompanied by an infographic depicting the layers of forces supporting the PIC and its outcomes.

• Critical Resistance. 14 May 2020. Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps in policing. Critical Resistance.

  A rubric for measuring whether popular policies addressing police violence are reformist or abolitionist.

• Felber, G. 9 June 2020. The struggle to abolish the police is not new. Boston Review.

  Historicization of the police and prison abolition movement, connecting it to the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century.

• Meiners, E. R., n. t. evans, A. Y. Davis, G. Dent, and B. E. Richie. 24 January 2022. Why policing and prisons can’t end gender violence. Boston Review.

  Interview with the authors of Davis, et al. 2022 in Abolitionist Theory explaining abolition feminist perspectives on gender and family violence, which are typically considered to require carceral intervention.

• Rasmussen, C., and K. J. James. 18 July 2020. Trading cops for social workers isn’t the solution to police violence. Transform Harm.

  Offers a corrective to vague calls for social workers to take the place of police, explaining that the field’s approaches to social justice are varied, arguing instead for a specifically abolitionist social work practice.

• Roberts, D. E. 5 April 2022. I have studied Child Protective Services for decades. It needs to be abolished. Mother Jones.

  An excerpted and edited selection from Roberts 2022 in Carceral Practices: The Child Welfare System detailing stories from the child welfare system and framing it as a system of family separation.