Creating a Social Work Team in a Public Defender’s Office: A Multi-Year Project

Overview: This paper explores the creation of the social work unit in the Public Defender’s Office (FCPDO). The FCPDO has collaborated with social work professionals as well as interns to provide an integrated approach to client defense, with the goal of securing alternative outcomes while advocating for systemic reform.Proposal text: Mass incarceration is an important social concern for activists from across many disciplines, and while addressing social justice issues is embedded as one of the six guiding values that the social work profession identifies for itself in the Code of Ethics, the quest for effective “smart-decarceration” techniques can be identified as a grand challenge of social work. Smart decarceration efforts may begin at any stage of the criminal justice system. The efforts here aim to reduce the length of incarceration for an individual by pairing them with services in the community. While this may not result in a completely suspended jail or prison sentence, reducing the time of incarceration is also a goal of smart decarceration efforts. Social workers in criminal justice settings arrive with a uniquely tailored approach towards addressing the extralegal needs of indigent clients that can translate into reduced costs to taxpayers and an improved perception of public defenders. Further review of quantitative studies comparing juvenile clients who received social work services with those only receiving traditional defense pointed to a need for school-related issues and advocacy to be at the forefront of any attempt to develop similar collaborative programs.
This paper explores the creation of the social work unit in the Fresno County Public Defender’s Office (FCPDO) over the past 3 years. The FCPDO has collaborated with social work professionals as well as interns from California State University, Fresno to provide an integrated approach to client defense, a style that is becoming increasingly supported as a “holistic” alternative to traditional lawyering, with the goal of securing alternative outcomes while advocating for systemic reform. Lawyers are usually not equipped to be effective “case managers'' in the traditional social work sense; however a public defender’s proximal and confidential relationship with indigent clients in a time of crisis makes their work imperative towards sustaining their clients’ rights and averting the often unjust carceral environment.
The program has grown from one bachelor’s level social worker to three full time social workers and up to six social work interns a year. In 2020, the program saved over 11,000 months of collective incarceration at the state level and over $1 million in county jail funds by serving 387 clients over the course of the year. Programs numbers for 2021 are forthcoming but trail the calendar year due to processing times for programs which can take up to 90 days to complete. In 2021, the FCPDO hired a juvenile unit social worker who has begun writing mitigation reports for juveniles awaiting sentencing as well as former Life Without Parole juveniles who are seeking resentencing following Supreme Court decisions banning the practice. This paper explores the successes and pitfalls in creating this multidisciplinary team that is addressing mass incarceration in a unique and innovative way.