Social Sciences (Aug 2024)

‘Compassionate’ Control: Social Work and the Rise of Carceral Feminism in Progressive Era Police Reform

  • Bethany Jo Murray,
  • Jennifer Erwin,
  • Sandra Leotti,
  • Elizabeth Allen,
  • Matthew Bakko,
  • Leah A. Jacobs,
  • C. Riley Hostetter,
  • Stephen Monroe Tomczak,
  • Alexandra Fixler

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13090454
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 9
p. 454

Abstract

Read online

The contemporary Defund the Police movement has renewed interest in social work’s role in public safety, leading some to call for increased police–social work collaborations. However, claims regarding the potential virtues and pitfalls of social work–police collaborations are largely ahistorical. To contextualize current debates, a systematic investigation into the evolution of social work and its relationship with law enforcement is necessary, particularly the impact that gender norms have had on this relationship. Drawing from the National Conference on Charities and Corrections proceedings, we examined how gendered underpinnings have shaped social work’s relationship to law enforcement and the understanding of social work’s role in public safety. During the Progressive Era, social workers acted as an intervention to reform police by infusing ‘rehabilitative’, ‘protective’, ‘preventative’, and ‘quarantining’ approaches in law enforcement. What emerges from the archives is a chronicle detailing how using social work as a gendered intervention for police reform during the Progressive Era fell short of addressing the root causes of carceral issues, drawing parallels between the Progressive Era reforms and today’s contemporary reforms.

Keywords