This is an open letter from clinical, mezzo and macro social work practitioners, researchers, and professors in support of the No New Jails NYC campaign. If you would like to sign on to this letter, please fill out the form below.
October 1, 2019
As social workers, professionals in the field of social work, researchers, advocates and organizers, we urge the New York City Council to reject the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice’s borough-based jail plan. We also call on New York City Council to begin the immediate closure of the jails on Rikers Island. The City’s borough-based plan would open four new detention centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. The plan would also open 3-6 hospital-based jails. These jails would supposedly be more “humane,” and “modern,” compared to Rikers Island where Layleen Polanco was killed just this year. The city’s plan would also delay the closure of Rikers until 2026, despite the fact that Rikers is home to a culture which perpetuates unending cycles of violence.
In addition to rejecting the borough-based jail plan, we ask that the City adopt a plan that closes Rikers immediately without building new jails. Unlike the City’s plan, No New Jail’s plan focuses resources exactly where they need to be: through investing in community safety and wellness by increasing support and funding for transformative justice, mental health services, decent affordable housing, public benefits, public education and transportation, harm reduction approaches to drug use, and access to job training and employment. We endorse this plan and urge everyone to distribute it widely.
Given the clear and unconscionable violence that the criminal legal system inflicts, we, as social workers, have a moral and professional obligation to resist it daily and to advance just, equitable and decarceral pathways to community safety and wellness. Jails fracture communities and families, and the very real fear of incarceration plagues those who are targeted by law enforcement and state violence: Black, brown, poor, disabled, transgender, gender non-conforming people and people who have immigrant status, or are engaged in sex work. Incarceration fosters economic inequality and poverty. Prisons and jails dehumanize some of the most vulnerable communities in order to maintain social control by isolating people from their communities, traumatizing them and their families, and denying them autonomy and their humanity.
As social workers we must oppose policies that perpetuate structural violence and racism and further harm. In our profession, we regularly come face to face with the realities of incarceration and the criminal legal system. We recognize both from research and practice that incarceration does little to provide healing for survivors of harm, does not provide avenues for accountability for those who cause harm (who are more often than not survivors themselves), and does not address the roots of inequality, poverty and violence. Instead, it exacerbates them.
While we all engage in social work in different ways and a diverse array of professional spaces, adherence to the core values listed in the National Association of Social Work’s code of ethics is what knits our profession together. These core values include social justice, dignity and worth of the person, and the importance of human relationships. In fighting for social justice, we are committed to the pursuit of “social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people" (National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 2017). The criminal legal system and incarceration stand in direct opposition to our core values and code of ethics. From the racialized criminalization of poverty, to the continued legacy of slavery and colonialism, from the breaking apart of families, and to the degradation of human dignity, incarceration is in direct opposition to the values and practices of social work. Prison abolition seeks to actualize the vision of social work values and ethics, through abolishing the interlocking oppressions of racism, classism, homophobia, and ableism, and the systems that bolster them, and through building life affirming institutions and practices. We as social workers must stand on the side of abolition.
Throughout history, the social work profession has been deeply intertwined with policing, prisons, and the carceral state. Through engaging in mandated reporting without the consideration of community-lead transformative justice processes, to the overlap between the foster care/child welfare system and the juvenile justice system, social workers have often aided in the dehumanization of our clients and communities. Social workers have also been complicit in the school to prison pipeline which is responsible for the incarceration of young people in ever increasing numbers, primarily Black and brown youth. Too often, social workers are in positions of gatekeeping. Our obligation is to make sure that we do not perpetuate mass incarceration by “feeding” people into the system, or supporting punitive and carceral interventions. Instead, we must fight against oppressive systems and practices and advance just, human-centered alternatives .
Those of us on the outside have a responsibility to show up for, and take leadership direction from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated organizers who have first-hand experience with the horrors of New York’s incarceration system. This is an important opportunity to stand in solidarity with our clients, our colleagues, and our friends and loved ones who have been oppressed and harmed by incarceration by forcefully naming the harm and violence caused by jails and prisons and advocating for community-based supports. These community-based supports can be found in the No New Jails plan which was developed through significant research, consultation with a diverse array of experts and the input of community and people impacted by mass incarceration, unlike the City’s borough-based jail plan, which only received one public city council hearing and closed-door meetings with groups whose financials are heavily intertwined with the state .
Language and theory from our profession has been co-opted and used as justification for expanding the suffering of our friends who are incarcerated. Even now, the City’s proposed plan aims to gain community support by promising “therapeutic” services and increased connection to community. Despite the City’s claim that the borough based jails will be “built upon a foundation of dignity and respect,” jails do nothing to honor and value the dignity and worth of the person. Jails serve as sites for sexual, gender, and race-based violence, with people enduring trauma from their first interaction with the cops. Jails routinely re-traumatize survivors of gender violence and other survivors who are criminalized through incarceration and policing. By relying on jails to provide mental health services, even through the proposed “outposted therapeutic” centers, this plan will expose those living with mental illnesses to more torture and decreased positive health outcomes. In reality, jails do not provide mental health services that we should deem tolerable. Instead, jails warehouse people with mental health issues who are often misdiagnosed and medicated incorrectly. The number of people incarcerated with mental illnesses has dramatically increased over the past 40 years. People can not get well in cages and we cannot sit by and silently observe as the City prepares to use billions of tax payer dollars to further fund this health crisis.
The Mayor is using the far-off and supposed closure of Rikers as justification for building new and "better" jails. Yet, Rikers itself was originally envisioned as a “humane” alternative to prisons. The same Department of Corrections that currently runs Rikers would also be tasked with running the borough-based jails. As with most oppressive systems, the problems and culture of violence that exist within the Rikers Island jails, and those before them, will be replicated in any jail, built anywhere, at any time. This is because a jail is still a jail. Changing the colors of cells, claiming to be “gender-responsive,” or even adding more social workers will not change the fact that as long as incarceration exist, humans will still wrongfully suffer. Social workers who base their practice in jails, work within a system which requires them to perpetuate harm. Employing more social workers will not alleviate this problem. The entire system needs to be eradicated and by closing Rikers and rejecting the borough-based jail plan, the New York city council would be able to focus their efforts on real decarceration.
The carceral state seeks to gain legitimacy by relying on research and practice provided by mental health professionals. Jails and prisons act with more impunity if they continue to incarcerate people under the guise of providing adequate or affirming mental health care. In addition to emphasizing faux “therapeutic” settings, reformers who claim to care about incarcerated people’s long-term mental health, now lift up trauma-informed care as a popular talking point. What these reformers fail to realize is that the best way to address harm in communities and prevent the trauma caused by incarceration is by providing community support to lessen the likelihood of people’s interactions with policing in the first place. Access to mental health services, housing, and other forms of actual care should be prioritized instead of a plan for the construction of new jails.
A realistic look at the numbers will show that the City does not need to open new jails if they instead focused on advancing actual innovation rather than short sighted reforms that re-create the same problems. By fast-tracking implementation of the new bail law, and going further by ending pretrial detention or eliminating cash bail for everyone, the City could send home people who are incarcerated right now. The city could work to decriminalize sex work, and quality of life charges, and stop wasting money on fare evasion campaigns.
Mayor de Blasio's previous attempts at a borough-based jail plan--the move of youth from Rikers to Horizons and Crossroads--only led to increased violence against youth detained in jail. Time and time again the Mayor has shown himself to be someone who is not concerned about the well-being poor, Black, and Brown New Yorkers. His jail plan is just another example of his administration ignoring the voices of community members to push a political agenda that is not reflective of their needs. Therefore, if the City decides to support the Mayor's plan and invest $11 billion in new jails, it is simply unrealistic to anticipate that MOCJ will not do everything in their power to earn a return on their investment. To put it simply: “if they build it, they will fill it.” This means that more time and resources will be spent on locking people up for minor offenses, and cutting people off from much-needed mental health resources. Continued incarceration is an inevitability under this plan.
Though the City claims that the jails will provide useful community amenities, we argue that community cannot be effectively built in a facility that cages our loved ones while keeping them isolated and at extreme risk for harm. Community is built through managing harm and conflict through transformative and restorative processes, while honoring the humanity of all those involved. Community is also built through increased access to social services, which could be funded using the $11 billion the City hopes to spend on their jail plan. Increased access to affordable housing, education, and harm-reduction services would improve the quality of life for thousands of New Yorkers. Improving public transportation and making it free and accessible should be a main priority of the City, who instead focuses on criminalizing people for being Black. As detailed in the No New Jails plan the city could “devote $220 million per year to establish and staff a comprehensive city-wide transformative justice project.” The city could also “devote $157 million per year to comprehensive harm reduction programming, including expanding access to low threshold syringe exchange, MAT, and recovery programs; and establishing and staffing safer injection facilities in existing community-based harm reduction programs.”
As abolitionist social workers, we fight daily against the racist and classist origins of our profession and choose to resist furthering the surveillance and division of Black and Brown communities. While we push for the immediate closure of Rikers, we do so with the awareness that Rikers is one facet of an expansive anti-Black system that will never truly keep us safe. Building community and providing affirming and sustainable mental-health care is central to the work that we do, and this cannot exist in Rikers, just as much as it cannot exist in the proposed borough-based jails. With care for our clients and their communities, our families, friends and loved ones in mind, we call on City Council to close Rikers immediately, reject the Mayor’s plan, and focus on allocating funds to programs that actually affirm the dignity and worth of those we work to serve.
- Kristina Agbebiyi, MSW, Survived and Punished NY Chapter
- Juli Kempner
- Cameron Rasmussen, LMSW, Columbia School of Social Work / CUNY Graduate Center
- Lawrielle West, University of Michigan School of Social Work
- Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW, RSW
- Caitlin Cull
- Lara Tobin
- Jennifer Goldberg, Hunter College
- Ruthana Wilson, Kennesaw State University
- Sarah Hamza
- Ashley Edwards, LBSW, MSW
- Jasmeen Nijjar
- Natasha Pasternack, LMSW
- Jill Friedman, retired social worker and lawyer
- Naz Seenauth
- Marian Billet, LMSW
- Meg Hines
- Samantha Catalanotto, Columbia University
- Francesca Barjon, Reclaim Pride Coalition
- Amanda Freedman, Silberman School of Social Work
- Kathleen McIntyre, LCSW, Columbia University Medical Center
- Hawa Hassan
- Eleni Zimiles, LMSW
- Maya Edery, MSW, Jewish Voice for Peace
- Abigail Allman
- Chantanae Singletary, MSW, Hunter College
- Alexandra Cogan, LMSW
- Priya Judge, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
- Talia Gruber, Hunter College
- Michael Dunn, LMSW, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration
- Claire Leonard
- Samuel Embry
- Christian Marinos
- Nicole Lopez, Columbia School of Social Work Alumni
- Matt Dietrichson, University of Texas at Austin
- D'Angelo Johnson
- Maureen Silverman, Hunter Silberman School of Social Work
- aruna krishnakumar
- Julie Novas
- Shana Salzberg
- Wendy Scher
- Alison Brokke, University of Michigan School of Social Work
- Herberth Chacon, Rutgers-Newark School of Social Work
- Shazzia Hines, Release Aging People in Prison
- Ambra-Maya Parker
- Sarah Gettel, MSW, One Love Global
- Andie Markowitz, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Shanni Liang
- Zakya Warkeno, Hunter College
- Kelsey Woida
- Ximena Frankel, Hunter Silberman School of Social Work
- Rebecca Mitnik
- Ella Tutlis
- Caroline DeLuca, CAMBA
- Ariana Viscione, LCSW
- Maria Alejandra Salas-Baltuano, MSW
- Chloe Murtagh
- Emily Weinrebe, LMSW
- lauren clapp, msw
- Martha Larson, LMSW, Hunter Silberman School of Social Work
- Tobi Erner, LCSW
- Chase Shiflet
- Jenny Crawford, Columbia School of Social Work
- Ian Johnson, LCSW
- Kyle Mabb, LMSW
- Michael Erwin, LCSW, CASAC-T
- Keith Peterkin MSW, Hunter College School of Social Work
- Jack Pacelle
- Erin George
- Kirk “Jae” James, NYU Silver School of Social Work
- Greg Hetmeyer, Columbia School of Social Work
- William Frey, Columbia School of Social Work
- Durrell Malik Washington Sr. MSW
- Carlynn Sharpe-Ehui
- Eddie DeGrand, LMSW
- Mae Smith, LMSW
- Danielle Karwowski
- Ali Mateo Belen
- Diane Stein
- Jack Ori, MSW, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Lindsay Darnell
- Brian Romero, LMSW
- Meredith Kornfeind
- Rachel Isreeli
- Mikayla Carignan
- Jamila Hammami, MSW, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Tania Varga, LMSW
- Stefanie M. Alleyne, MSW, Silberman School of Social Work
- Mannya Acosta-Duque, MSw
- claudia chika, LMSW
- Nanda Prabhakar, LCSW
- Claire Solomon Nisen, Columbia School of Social Work
- Naethra Sreekrishna, LCSW
- Margaret Stenger, LCSW
- Jessica LaHood, LCSW
- Violeta Donawa, MSW Candidate
- Krista Green, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Arielle Bonne, LCSW
- Taylan Stulting
- Ariana Beers, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Elise Jayakar, MSW
- Audrey Pallmeyer, MSW
- Elwin Wu, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Hannah Green
- Sydnee Corriders, Columbia School of Social Work
- Letticia Rosa, MSW
- Sophia Mysel, Columbia School of Social Work
- Uzoma Chibundu
- Nnenna Onyema
- Bailey Krestakos, MSW, Planned Parenthood of MI
- Dave George
- Emely Santiago
- Donyel Byrd, MSW, LCSW Indiana University School of Social Work
- Marjorie Isaacs
- Alex Kime, MSW
- Aaisha
- Ren Lee
- Hadley Kleinschmidt
- Kayla Cisero LMSW
- Alivia Curl, LMSW, Columbia School of Social Work
- Adeline Medeiros, LMSW
- Nnemoma Chukwumerije, Columbia University
- Rebecca Weston, JD, LCSW
- Chauntel R Gerdes
- Michele Paolella
- Giselle Regalado
- Zazu Tauber
- Alexis Rubenstein, LMSW
- Ben Sher
- Destinye McGill, Columbia University
- Teresa Shen, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Charlotte Selous
- Sophia P. Sarantakos
- Yajaira Hernandez Trejo, Columbia School of Social Work
- Emely Guzman, Columbia School of Social Work
- Stacy Amador, Columbia School of Social Work
- Carlee Watley, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Caitlin Krenn, NASW PACE
- Claire Raizen, Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work
- Hillary Hersh, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Selenah Martin, Columbia University
- Heena Sharma
- Shuronia Johnson, LCSW, Columbia University
- Demetrius Hicks
- Kristen Slack
- Desirée
- Monica Castro, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Katherine Irani
- Rachel Smith, Columbia Univerisity
- Helianis Quijada Salazar, Urban Justice Center
- Olivia Smith, Columbia University
- Luis Roberto Machuca, LMSW
- Terceira Molnar
- Jasmine Gibson, Henry Street Settlement
- Courtney Cogburn
- Yasmine Wallace
- Mikayla Lee
- Micki Duran, Teachers College
- Danielle London, Columbia University
- Mal Johnson, LCSW, New York University
- Cornelius Baker, Columbia School of Social Work
- Taryn Crosby, LCSW
- Chelsea Mullen, LMSW
- Bailey Barrett, BSW
- Kelsey Reeder, LCSW, Harlem Children’s Zone
- Fatima Mabrouk
- Caroline Sheahan
- Axel Chiappori, BSW
- Teresa Shen, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Jesse Ortiz, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Kayla Hartman LMSW
- Kit Ginzky
- Sophie Majteles, MSW, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Matthew Palumbo
- Rufina
- Devon Simpson, MSW, RSW
- Maggie Bender, LCSW
- Gretchen Begley, LMSW
- Rhoda Smith
- Mileti Afuhaamango
- Shoshana Salzberg, Hunter Silberman School of Social Work
- Ayesha Kamal, Hunter Silberman School of Social Work
- Michelle Cameo, MSW
- Emily Scott
- Mark Plassmeyer, PhD, MSW
- Kimberly Wirt, MSW, Silberman School of Social Work
- Lauren Osoria
- Amanda Anger, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem
- Madeline Berry, BSW, Columbia University School of Social work
- Esther Lee, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem
- Yichu Xu
- Matthew Chen, LMSW
- Vileti Akolo
- Riley Marcano, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Frances Whiting, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Josie Brown, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Imani Wood-Rodriguez, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Seth Hoffman, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Caroline Chapman
- Shira Hecht
- Dora Gonzalez
- Jaclyn O'Connell
- Sheryl Lo
- Mistee Denson
- Evelyn Milford, Columbia University
- Liana Petruzzi, LCSW
- Nicole Seigel, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem
- Pauline Pisano, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Jonathan Brown, MSW
- Sukey Bernard
- McLean Zauner, Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work
- McKenna Talley, ACSW
- Naina Ramrakhani
- Elena Callahan, MSW
- Iliana Panameno, MSW
- Mallie Froehlich, Columbia University School of Social Work
- Hope Beaver BSW, Columbia University
- Jondean Walwyn, LMSW, Hunter-Silberman School of Social Work
- Margaret Horwitz
- Ilona Joseph-Gabriel
- Priya Sikerwar
- Margaret Horwitz, MSW
- Jessica J Phippen, MSW
- Shreya Mandal, LCSW
- Beatrice Segal, LCSW
- Lauren Spencer, LCSW
- Jazmine Russell
- Jessie Roth
- Catherine Gobel
- Rhea Saini, Columbia University
- Bailey Bruce, Columbia School of Social Work
- Ian Bell, LMSW
- Ryan Peter
- Ruth Eiss
- Sarah T Diaz
- Desiree Caro, MSW, Columbia School of Social Work
- Mindy Holmes
- Mary Catherine Benge, Silberman School of Social Work
- Jessica Jacob, Columbia University
- Sara Eldridge
- Rebecca Logue, LSWAIC
- Kelly Merdinger, MSW
- Angela Jacobs
- Kelly Merdinger, MSW
- Amanda Maisel
- Ellen Line, LMSW
- Katrina Michelle, LCSW
- Sadie, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem