Social Worker in Penitentiaries. Occupational Profile

This piece of research was triggered by the novelty of social work in the Romanian prison system. Most of the social workers in this institutional context were employed after 2003 and it is only in 2007 when the Prison Administration is dealing with the need for standards and methodologies for this particular area.
This study has two main parts: the first one tries to identify how social workers in prison place themselves and how they are perceived by the significant others within the prison system (ex. psychologists, educators and prison governors) in terms of competencies, training and so on; the second part of this study compares the findings from the first part with the European standards provided by European Prison Regulations (CoE Recommendation no. 2 /2006) and other examples of good practices in EU countries.
In the end the author provides a proposal for an occupational profile of social workers in the Romanian prison system. According to this profile the core task of a social worker is to connect the inmates and the prison administration to the outside world, in particular to the inmates’ families and other community resources relevant to inmates’ resettlement.


Keywords: prison system, inmates’ resettlement, social work