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Women Social Workers In Corrections

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Women Social Workers in Corrections
Tamme Fiechtner
Rasmussen College

Women in Criminal Justice
Dr. Teddy Turner
08-29-08

Women Social Workers in Corrections
After working in community corrections for over a year it became apparent that something is just not working. Clients should be coming into this system, re-adjusting to life within a community setting, and completing treatment programs meant to better themselves with the end result of re-entering society as productive citizens. However, this is not the reality. For a person who worked with clients of this nature, without formal training in social work, the community corrections aspect of the criminal justice system began to seem like a waste of time and energy. To this person, the clients themselves had become something other than human beings; some sort of sub-species that for the most part were incapable of changing their behavior. And for this same person, watching social workers work with clients tirelessly, and to whatever eventual outcome, became an amazing experience. This person is me, and I am not a social worker. I’ve never wanted to be a social worker. And I couldn’t see how or why any human being would subject himself or herself to the stresses of being a social worker, when the rate of success to failure is seemingly very grim. Social workers began to fascinate me, therefore, I decided to find out what drives a person to do this kind of work, day in and day out, in light of failure.
A recurring theme in literature about social workers is that of burnout. How do social workers keep doing their jobs in light of being over worked and facing what can be considered by an outsider as “failure”? According to Munn-Giddings et. al., “Workplace stress and burnout are recognized phenomena which impact negatively on the delivery of care by health and social work organizations” (Munn-Giddings et. al., 2005). Quantitative research...