Following the 2020 deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville at the hands of police officers, Connecticut lawmakers responded by passing a comprehensive police accountability law. This law—Connecticut’s Public Act 20-1, “A Police Accountability Act”—encourages police to use social workers when responding to calls for help, especially after high-profile incidents of police brutality.

Dr. Isabel Logan, an associate professor of social work at Southern Connecticut State University, saw an opportunity in the bill. In August 2020, Logan co-founded the Social Work and Law Enforcement Project (SWLE) with Lt. Matthew Solak of the Willimantic Police Department. The project began as a one-year pilot program that placed two social work interns from Eastern Connecticut State University, where Logan was then teaching, in police departments. Since then, SWLE has grown into a full-time program that includes social workers and social work interns with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from colleges in five states—Connecticut, New York, Alabama, Kentucky, and Alaska—working with police in five Connecticut cities—Willimantic, Milford, West Hartford, Norwich, and Suffield—as well as Port Jervis, NY, Florence, Alabama, and Fort Wainwright, Alaska, and the Southern Connecticut State University Police Department.

“I was a public defender social worker in Connecticut for 20 years, where my first job as a social worker was in New Haven’s drug court in 1996. The drug court had a police officer assigned to it from the New Haven Police Department, with whom I worked closely. I also worked for the GA, JD, and juvenile court,” says Logan, whose extensive experience as a forensic social worker and her research on bilingual professionals and microaggressions in the court system inform her academic career and research on police social work.

“I have always been interested in the interface between social work and law,” adds the renowned scientist, who entered academia with the goal of developing a forensic social work program that would reduce recidivism rates and bridge the gap between academia and the workplace to meet the needs of society.

“After George Floyd, I reached out to the Willimantic police, the city where I worked, and they were extremely accommodating. I needed help placing students, they had to comply with state regulations. Lt. Solak from Willimantic and I hit it off right away. I couldn’t ask for a better partner and co-founder,” says Logan, who joined the Southern faculty in fall 2023.

The groundbreaking program for social workers and police departments has become a nationwide model, garnering the attention and praise of U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in 2022. Additionally, Logan was recently named 2023 Social Worker of the Year by the Connecticut Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers for her contributions to the emerging field of police social work. Logan is also a licensed clinical social worker, CIT coordinator, and certified police instructor in Connecticut.

Logan and the SWLE project have also led the development of a curriculum for the nation’s first police social work academy, and she is receiving calls from across the country to share her innovations with law enforcement agencies and social work schools. The academy prepares the interns who will be placed in law enforcement settings and the police officers who are preparing to become their assignment managers, and trains social workers who will begin work in a police social work office.

As part of the SWLE program, interns shadow police officers, act on referrals, attend community meetings, and conduct research and policy work. “Social workers are only sent to calls that have to do with mental health,” Logan says. “We try to be preventative and reach individuals before a crisis develops,” she says, adding, “Safety is our top priority. No intern is ever alone – or leaves the car until a police officer has assessed the situation and cleared the scene.”

Logan has developed a national police social work intern support network to connect those developing the field in several states across the country. As part of this work, Logan has presented at two national conferences and is the first to develop an integrative practice model for police social work, which she published in the Journal of Social Work Education in an article on preparing social workers for police social work.

In May 2024, Logan and the SWLE Project hosted the 3rd Annual National Police Social Work Conference on South Campus. The conference was attended by more than 170 people from 16 different states.

Tina James, a graduate of the Police Social Work Internship Program and a full-time social worker with the Milford Police Department, says participating in the SWLE project has given her the opportunity to give back on different levels and interact with different people.

“It’s not work for me,” says James. “I have a passion for working with people who are less fortunate than me. In this role, there are no limits to what I can do – I have so much support and that has given me the confidence to push myself and be the person that people can rely on and help them. Helping someone – that in itself is enough for me – fills an inner fire within me. It’s all about the purpose.”

Southern has been good for both her and SWLE. “I’m so happy to be at Southern and to be accepted for my research,” she says. “The social work department here makes sense for the work we do with graduate programs. We do community action research – practice-based research and research-based practice. Our program is the first in the country to offer education and training for police social work.”