3 minute read
MACRO TO MICRO
The impacts of social work in carceral spaces
Social work for Brianna Suslovic, M.S.W. ’18, is about both the macro and the micro, the structural and the personal and changing systems for the benefit of many individuals. Currently a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, she describes the focus of her studies as “courts, prisons, policing, jails and the role of social work in all of those spaces.” Through her courses, she’s adding to her theoretical understanding of the relationship between policy changes and social change—the macro perspective—specifically, in regard to incarceration and decarceration.
When she arrived at SSW, she recalled, “I had a very vague sense of how systems work, about policy and the constraints it places on social work, how it restricts clients’ access to housing, public defenders, mental health services. My favorite SSW classes were policy classes.”
During her internships, Suslovic witnessed the micro effects of policy every day. “The folks I was seeing had either prior or current experience in the criminal justice system,” she recalled, and their lives were precarious. After getting her M.S.W., she was a forensic social worker in Brooklyn. “I kept seeing the same problems,” she said. “I recognized patterns: people being released from jail to go to a shelter, not getting there, ending up in the hospital. The goal has to be to address problems at a systemic level—to develop a coherent, comprehensive plan for assisting people in these situations.”
More recently, Suslovic has taught courses on transformative justice at the University of Chicago; she also tutors at Cook County Jail for the high school equivalency exam. With members of the Chicago nonprofit Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, she’s developing courses for incarcerated students at Logan Women’s Prison.
“As I’m teaching, I’m thinking about how to account for participants’ lived experience, finding parallels between the interpersonal and the structural. These women may have had a violent intimate partner or been isolated by a partner from friends and family, and now incarceration isolates them from those same sources of support,” Suslovic said. “It’s not a therapeutic setting, but I’m drawing on my clinical understanding of trauma and oppression. The teaching pulls on the same skills I’d use in group therapy.”
“It’s generative, exciting,” she added, “to see students progress from not talking much in class to feeling capable, claiming a degree of ownership and authority over what they’re learning. So much of their experience is dehumanizing, it’s very moving when a student says, ‘I’m good at math,’ ‘I’m interested in history,’ or ‘I have skills I can put into practice.’”
As moving, said Suslovic, are their motivations: getting their GED, for instance, to set an example for their kids. “I’m so impressed by how focused and invested the students are in their classes, how they’re prioritizing their professional, educational and personal goals, taking advantage of the chance to be in a classroom to revisit ideas and goals they’ve had to put aside.”
As Suslovic’s students work toward a larger life through hard-won victories, she is right there with them. “It’s egalitarian,” said Suslovic, “There’s a lot that I’m learning, we’re teaching each other.”—Faye Wolfe
