Will the real social worker please stand up?: Defining criminal justice social work

Abstract

The fundamental objective of this article is to urge a change in the conventional paradigms used to define the practice of social work in the field of criminal justice, and to set in motion a conversion to a unified paradigm of criminal justice social work. A unified paradigm is used here to refer to the multidimensional and multidisciplinary practice of social work in working with both those who offend and those who are victims of crime, in order to restore harm done and prevent further offending. This text is essentially nomenclatorial in nature, meaning, it deals with the naming and defining the specialisation of criminal justice social work as distinctly different from social work in general.