Webinar Summary:

Social workers are a unique and vital part of legal defense teams within the criminal justice system. Public defense social work is a small but growing field, with opportunities to work on multidisciplinary teams in a unique context, supporting and advocating for individuals who have been marginalized and dehumanized by both society and the legal system. This training aims to explore the landscape of the criminal legal system in Washington, the role of a social worker within a multidisciplinary defense team, and how this work supports broader goals of macro-level advocacy and social change. It will also address implicit bias that social workers internalize about the social construction of crime and "criminals," and discuss how defense social workers can address this same bias within members of the criminal legal system through mitigation, a method of contextualizing an individual's criminal legal involvement through a person-centered and trauma-informed lens.

Goals and Objectives:

• Reframing the perspective of individuals identified as "criminals" and the role of their defense team within the legal system
• Building a better understanding of overlapping systems of oppression that intersect within the legal system
• Contextualizing the social worker's role and impact when working with justice-involved individuals
• Exploring the concept of mitigation as a tool for advocacy and transformative justice