Category: Community Safety & Justice
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Professional or Personal Identity Cannot Exempt a Social Worker from Accountability
The authority entrusted to a social worker exists for the benefit of the client. Neither clinical expertise, institutional standing, nor membership in a marginalized community can justify using that authority for sexual access. The profession must be capable of stating this principle without qualification and applying it when allegations concern someone whose identity or public…
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When Social Work Loses Sociology: Clinical Silos and the Opening for Community Safety
Social work risks making itself smaller when it allows therapy to become the dominant explanation of what the profession is for. The concern is not that clinical practice lacks value. It is that a profession organized increasingly around individual treatment can lose the theoretical tools needed to understand the institutions, social relationships, and distributions of…
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Protecting Social Workers Requires More Than Another Workplace Violence Statement
Social workers should not have to accept threats or assault as the price of doing meaningful work. A profession that asks practitioners to protect others must also expect employers to protect the people delivering those services. Workplace safety belongs in staffing decisions, budgets, supervision, and executive accountability. On September 17, 2026, the National Association of…
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South Dakota’s Falling Crime Rate Does Not Mean Every Community Is Safer
South Dakota’s statewide crime totals fell in 2025. That is welcome news, but newly released mortality data show why social workers and policymakers must resist declaring victory from a single aggregate measure. American Indian residents continue to experience homicide and suicide at profoundly disproportionate rates. A serious public-safety strategy must hold both facts at once.…
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An Encampment Is Not Someone Else’s Caseload: Social Work Must Reclaim Street-Level Housing Practice
The South Seattle encampment now spreading across several acres is a picture of institutional surrender. It is also a warning to social work. Neighbors report trash, needles, tree clearing, violence, and an informal market. People living at the site describe a need for housing, recovery support, and protection from winter weather. The city says it…
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Social Work Does Not Have to Own Every Form of Helping
Social workers are often described as the people who do everything nobody else will do. They counsel families, respond to crises, navigate benefits, advocate in schools, support patients, organize communities, investigate abuse, help people find housing, supervise programs, interpret policy, and repair failures created elsewhere in government. The description is intended as praise. It is…
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LITE Shows Social Work Education How Tutoring Can Become Community Safety Work
Social work education often speaks about prevention, community engagement, and interdisciplinary practice. Lehman College’s LITE program offers a concrete example of what those ideas can look like when a public college works with a justice agency to support young people before their challenges become crises. Lehman identifies LITE as Lehman’s Initiative for Tutoring and Empowerment.…
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NYC Probation Is a Community-Safety Hub: Its First Deputy Commissioner Is a Social Worker
New York City’s Neighborhood Opportunity Network shows what public safety looks like when supervision, education, food access, art, employment, and neighborhood participation occupy the same civic space. First Deputy Commissioner Robert Eusebio’s career as a master’s-level social worker also highlights a professional path that social work education rarely treats with sufficient seriousness. When social workers…