The Power of Trust in the context of Social Work in Prison

• In Event: PWG - Correctional staff and institutional culture

Abstract

Prisons are often described as places of mistrust. The rationale behind this representation is based on the notion that people are incarcerated because they have broken basic social rules. This makes it even clearer that trust needs to be worked on and should not be blindly relied on in every way. It’s therefore argued that trust represents a crucial element of the relation work between social work professionals and service users (Soukiala & Pietilä, 2024). In the Swiss penal system, one of the principles of social workers’ role in prison is to support incarcerated people with counselling and care in their rehabilitation. However, their role is also challenged by the control function. Therefore, trust and control can be seen as complementary and interdependent in carceral institutions. We argue that in this context trust represents a basis or a condition for possibilities to open up towards lines of flights (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Inspired by post-humanist thinking, this paper analyses how “moments of trust” emerge and affect across human and non-human elements using the concept of “affective atmospheres” (Anderson, 2009). Atmospheres can be seen as the tangible but elusive feeling in the air that materializes the emotional and affective connection people have with spaces. For the analysis we use materials from shadowings with social work professionals in (Swiss) open prisons.

Anderson, B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 77–81.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translation and Foreword by Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press.
Soukiala, T., & Pietilä, I. (2024). Elements of trust and trust-building in gerontological social work. The social worker’s perspective. Nordic Social Work Research, 14(4), 684–696. https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2024.2414123

Authors

• Martin Böhnel, School of Social Work, HES-SO Valais/Wallis

• Marina Richter, School of Social Work, HES-SO Valais/Wallis