About the Journal
Aims and Scope
Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work is dedicated to the development and dissemination of abolitionist values, theory, and praxis within the profession of social work, including through research, pedagogy, education, policy, and practice. The journal explores the role of social work in challenging the systems and structures that perpetuate and maintain injustice and oppression through the carceral state, including prisons, policing, child welfare, immigration detention, and mental health services. The journal also critically examines the role of social work within carceral systems and the contradictions and conflicts this presents to the profession’s purported ethical values. APSW is committed to exploring the challenges that result from raising abolitionist perspectives in social work, and supporting social work scholars, educators, and practitioners in confronting these challenges. As such, APSW is specifically seeking articles that provide an explicit analysis of both social work and abolition.
Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work seeks articles that explore:
- Definitions and conceptualizations of abolitionist praxis in social work.
- Ethical implications and/or tensions of social work in relation to the carceral state.
- Critiques of social work’s role in carceral systems.
- The consequences of carcerality, and strategies for addressing them as it pertains to social work.
- Social work’s efforts to create alternatives to punishment, incarceration, or carceral systems.
- Social work's efforts to reduce pipelines into the carceral continuum.
- Restorative and transformative justice in social work, or innovative anti-carceral policies and practices that provide responses to social problems.
- Innovative and collaborative community-driven practices or strategies that shift power and leadership to those impacted by carceral systems.
- Collaborative community-driven strategies or methods that work to dissolve carceral systems.
- Black and Indigenous anti-carceral social work practices that have been ignored or delegitmized by the academy.
- Frameworks that challenge normalized epistemologies, theories, methodologies, and/or research approaches.
- The advancement of abolitionist perspectives and pedagogy in social work education.
- The role of higher education and its relation to the carceral state.
Publisher
Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work is published by the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and supported by the University of Houston Libraries.
Peer Review Policy
Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes original work. This journal uses an open peer review process. This means the identity of the author(s) and the reviewer(s) will be known by all participants during the peer review and publication process. We believe an open peer review process is most aligned with an abolitionist praxis as it encourages transparency and accountability. We also believe an open peer review process encourages more constructive reviews that improve the overall quality of submissions and facilitates publication.
Open Access Policy
Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work is committed to providing immediate open access to its content based on the value that knowledge should be free and accessible by all. The journal will use the Budapest Open Access Initiative’s definition of open access (affirmed in 2017) which states:
“By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
Publication Frequency
Aboltionist Perspectives in Social Work is published twice per year - Spring and Fall.
Copyright
Copyright to works published in Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work is retained by the author(s).
Licensing
All articles published in Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (CC BY 4.0).
Article Processing/Submission Charges
Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work does not use article processing charges or other submission charges.