From Misery to Mission: Forensic Social Workers on Multidisciplinary Mitigation Teams

Social workers are well-equipped by experience and education to play a pivotal role in death penalty mitigation teams. They offer expertise in researching complete social histories, providing for people under threat of execution, and helping those individuals cope with that threat. The social worker...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social work (New York) 2003-07, Vol.48 (3), p.362-371
Main Authors: Guin, Cecile C., Noble, Dorinda N., Merrill, Thomas S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biographies
Capital Punishment
Child Abuse
Client Characteristics (Human Services)
Client Relations
Crime
Crime victims
Criminal sentencing
Criminals
Criminology
Death
death penalty
Defendants
Emotional Disturbances
Ethical aspects
Evidence
Extenuating circumstances
Family (Sociological Unit)
Forensic Psychiatry
Forensic sciences
forensic social work
Guilty verdicts
Humans
Interdisciplinary Approach
Interdisciplinary Communication
Interprofessional Approach
Juries
Legal Problems
Life Change Events
life history
Mental Disorders
Mitigation
multidisciplinary collaboration
Narration
Persuasive Discourse
Practice
Prisons
Professional Role
Punishment
Research and Development
Social History
Social work
Social Work, Psychiatric - methods
Social Work, Psychiatric - organization & administration
Social worker-Client relationships
Social Workers
Trials
United States
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Description
Summary:Social workers are well-equipped by experience and education to play a pivotal role in death penalty mitigation teams. They offer expertise in researching complete social histories, providing for people under threat of execution, and helping those individuals cope with that threat. The social worker's primary role is to develop the client's story through an extensive empirical inquiry into the person's life. An equally important role for social workers is to work with the multidisciplinary defense team to ensure that the client's life story becomes a part of the defense. This article, through a case example of a condemned prisoner, examines the mitigation team concept, focusing on the social work role.
ISSN:0037-8046
1545-6846
DOI:10.1093/sw/48.3.362