Community social work as the basis of the process of reintegration in the Penitentiary Centers

Abstract

The participation of professionals in the social sphere, especially social work professionals, is essential in ensuring an effective process of change in persons deprived of liberty. Social workers must assume a central and dynamic role, incorporating the different professional disciplines that are part of penitentiary centers.

This work, the central axis in the process of withdrawal of persons deprived of liberty, has three different lines of action: first, awareness of the social reality in which the person deprived of liberty finds himself, later, the organization of the agents and existing resources to facilitate the reintegration process and, ultimately, the mobilization of community resources for this purpose. The process of transition to freedom becomes essential in prison success as it is where the learning carried out is valued and where the inmate faces the situations that have led him to commit the criminal act. The article that we present, under a qualitative methodology in which the agents involved are given a voice, highlights the importance of community work in the process of reintegration and identity change, led by social workers, in which not only do they participate the professionals of the center, but also the social entities, the relatives and the inmates themselves.