The NEW Routledge International Handbook of Criminal Justice Social Work

Versión en español

Call for Chapters

Deadline: Sunday 31st December 2023 

We invite chapter proposals from practitioners, academics and people with lived experience who work in and engage critically with the intersection of criminal justice and social work practice.

Through this new handbook, we seek to provide a rich and comprehensive study of how criminal justice social work is practised, researched and experienced internationally. Routledge International Handbooks aim to provide a benchmark for the discipline, including fresh perspectives on established topics and insights into emerging areas.

This book aims to offer a range of contributions from across the globe, introducing researchers, research students, social work practitioners and lived experience experts to contemporary practice from a breadth of perspectives.

This book seeks to provide a broad platform to represent this diversity and richness of criminal justice social work practice - exploring histories of complicity, varying language and approaches of social work, emerging research methodologies or multi-disciplinary spaces.

The Handbook does not seek to form a consensus of what criminal justice social work is but rather aims to collate a global picture of the breadth of practice, research and experience for students, practitioners and academics alike.

Chapter proposals

The form of each chapter can vary, with academic contributions up to 8,000 words, all-inclusive (English language). We also welcome shorter 3,500 reflection contributions for people with lived experience and/or practitioners.

Possible areas include (but are not limited to):

1. ‘Every social worker is a criminal justice social worker’ (explanation of contexts in which criminal justice social work operates and demographics)

2. Criminology and theory for social workers

• History
• Psychiatry
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Legal perspectives on criminal justice
• Human Rights and criminal justice
• Social work ethics and criminal justice
• Civil rights of inmates and offenders supervised in the community

3. Histories of criminalisation and social work

• Racialised practice
• Decolonisation
• Guardians and gatekeepers
• Gendered discrimination
• LGBTIQ+
• Political criminalisation social practice
• Social work as family policing

4. Criminal justice social work education

• Differences globally
• Admissions
• Curriculum
• Human Rights and Social Justice
• Victimology
• Restorative justice
• Social work education in prisons

5. Social Work with children and families

• Domestic abuse
• Maternal imprisonment
• Impact of incarceration on families left behind
• Child protection and safeguarding risk
• Cybercrime
• Online and AI assisted abuse
• Youth justice
• Criminalised youth
• Diversion schemes
• Neurodiversity

6. Social work with adults

• Prison social work
• Court work
• Addiction and recovery
• Disability
• Homelessness
• Health care
• Veterans
• Criminal justice mental health
• Working with Violent offenders
• Working with Radicalised offenders (political, religious, etc)
• Multi-disciplinary Team risk management
• Mental capacity and risk of harm to others
• Ageing

7. Social work with communities

• Community development
• Charities and third sector
• Digitalisation and surveillance
• Community restorative justice
• Radical abolitionist perspectives
• Activism - green social work, abolitionist social work
• New criminalisation - protest, activism, political prisoners

8. Criminal justice representation in the workforce

• Criminal record checks
• Colonised criminal justice
• Workforce representation
• Ethics 5. Social workers in prisons
• Social workers in police stations
• Social workers in courts
• Social workers in probation and parole settings
• Social workers in schools

9. Criminal justice social work research

• Lived experience
• Ethics
• Methodologies
• Transdisciplinary research

10. Professional reflections and experts by experience insights (these can be shorter chapters of 3,500 words, all-inclusive).

Please include the following to complete the proposal form:

• 500-word proposal including a title of 20 words or less
• Short biography
• Contact details

For questions

Or if you would like to discuss any aspect of your proposal, please email caroline.bald@essex.ac.uk and m.ines.martinez@der.uned.es

Timeline:

1. Call for Chapters announced - November 2023
2. Abstract deadline - 31st December 2023
3. Confirmation of acceptance - February 2024
4. Full submission deadline - June 2024
5. Publication in 2025