February 17, 2021
Sandra Leotti
A University of Wyoming assistant professor’s research article has received national recognition by the University of Chicago Press Journals.
Sandra Leotti, in UW’s Division of Social Work, was awarded the 2021 Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize for her submission, titled “The Discursive Construction of Risk: Social Work Knowledge Production and Criminalized Women.” The prize is awarded annually for what is judged to be the best article published in Social Service Review in the preceding year.
Leotti’s article examines how knowledge production within social work privileges a psychological discourse, relying on individual explanations for crime and criminalization above all other possible explanations -- specifically, that social work passively accepts the logic of punishment rather than challenging the inequitable social conditions that lead to mass incarceration.