Defund Social Workers: Cops by Another Name

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From The New Republic: “The danger of trading out law enforcement for social workers, or trying to rein in police squads by adding soft-eyed chaperones, isn’t that the unarmed helpers would be ineffective or that crises sometimes require blunt force. The concern is that if you measure in terms of the power to coerce, surveil, and inflict lasting harm, social workers are, thanks to very nature of the job, cops by another name—‘key participants,’ said Dorothy Roberts, a sociologist and law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, ‘in a system that is designed to control and punish marginalized communities.’

JMacForFamilies is an organization devoted to fighting the child welfare system—or ‘family regulation’ system, as its critics often call it. Jasmine Wali, the director of advocacy at JMacForFamilies, explained, ‘Social workers are still going to put people in jail if they’re in crisis,’ if that crisis isn’t easy to handle, and they can’t ‘just talk the person down.’ In homeless shelters, staff members trained in social work call the police ‘on everything,’ just as they do in group homes for children in the foster care system ‘if a child misses curfew, or a child is throwing things or having a tantrum.’ Social workers administer urinalyses or other drug tests, which can result in people losing eligibility for social services. In the family court system, so much of what they do ‘is like parole work,’ said another social worker I spoke to. Between 2000 and 2020, among 54 cases of people arrested for self-managing or helping self-manage an abortion, 6 percent were reported to the police by social workers, according to a report by If/When/How.

‘Oh, so you want to be put in jail nicely?’ said Kamaria Excell, who works with ­JMacForFamilies. ‘Cuz that’s all that’s going to happen.… I’m not gonna show up necessarily with a gun.… I’m gonna have my sweater and my notebook,’ but ‘you’re going to jail.’ Backed against a wall—or just following the protocols of the agency or nonprofit that employs them—the social worker calls the police.”

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5 COMMENTS

  2. “You snatch babies,” indeed. Beware of pathological lying social workers, if your well behaved child gets 100% on his state standardized tests. In the words of a psychologist – who rationalized such maltreatment by a social worker – “we want to maintain the status quo.”

    Murdering the best and brightest children in a country, so we may “maintain the” “pedophile empire”? Humm. Perhaps, that’s unwise?

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  3. Social workers “put people in jail” are often required to because there are no places for those who are having a mental health crisis. The problem is systemic. Social workers that give urine analysis are almost always required to by law. Again, this problem is systemic. It’s treated like parole work because that’s the job description. Personally, I would never ever take a job working in any legal focused social work – like CYS or DHS – because it is the laws that govern these agencies and the job descriptions themselves that put social workers in the positions where they have to do these things. I definitely don’t doubt that some social workers believe that they actually are doing the right thing which is unfortunate. I have known a handful of those. But I think a lot of them feel trapped inside of a system that is stacked against them and their clients And they are doing what they can to mitigate the impacts it has on the people they’re trying to help. Harm reduction philosophy is real and those rooted in that kind of philosophy are trying to make changes but…

    It is indeed a lot like police work – You think that once you get into a position you can change the system but once you’re in, you feel trapped and powerless because the problems are so deep and written into the very laws that govern your available actions. All this to say that if you’re a social worker, you also have to be involved in direct action, actively working to upend the laws and policies you are governed by. If you’re not, you’re complicit.

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  4. I am a 63 year old American male citizen who is affected and disabled by serious mental illness (SMI), who has spent much time (over 3.25 years since 2010) of ‘in-patient’ care in our nation’s still very broken public mental health care system-settings. I have also served as the impetus to long past due federal oversight and intervention upon two different state managed mental hospitals in two different states, AZ circa 2012-2015, and Montana circa 2017-2019. And I attest herein that contemporary American social worker LCSWs defend the worst imaginable psychiatric care practices in all such settings, and they have no right to access the personal health information (PHI) any ill American citizen (sans express consent), nor to interfere in the direct flow of care of mentally ill American citizens. What I know, as a matter of proven fact, is that in state managed mental hospitals, and beyond today, today’s bad American psychiatrists very depend upon these people to defend them and their own suspect ways. They don’t understand directly relevant US law, while the civil and human rights of mentally ill American remain targets of psychiatric abuse all in virtually such settings today, despite the fact that the rights of any and all Americans transcend the authority of any kind of medical doctor. Yes, on point with the fact that today’s American psychiatrist is again repeating his own worst (the vast majority of today’s US psychiatrists are white males) behaviors of the past, kicking mentally ill Americans in severe crisis on onto our nations streets; a repeat of what happened when the failed promise of “deinstitutionalization” process fell apart, sitting on their hands when 10s upon 10s of thousands of their own several mentally ill patients were kicked out into our nation’s streets, circa the late 1960s and well into the 1970s. Feel free to visit my current project: “All Eyes on the American Psychiatric Association, “, as well to visit my past projects 1) “PJ Reed. The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse.”; 2) “Montana State Hospital. Montana’s Forgotten Suicides.” Feedback is welcome.

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    • I’m not sure the system is “broken” so much as that it doesn’t really have the same objectives as it claims to have. Keeping folks under control is a big part of the agenda, and “healing” is something they gave up on a long time ago, if they ever really had that as a goal at all. Someone who thinks electrocuting people into having a grand mal seizure is good “treatment” for anything is not really interested in helping you get better!

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