Building a Behavioral Health Program Inside a Jail | Deb Goldfarb

Can you do genuinely ethical social work inside a jail — or does the setting corrupt the work no matter what? Deb Goldfarb has spent her career living inside that question. A self-described abolitionist, she built a behavioral health program from nothing inside a Boston jail, and she joins Professor Ace to talk honestly about the tension, the compromises, and the moments that make it worth it.In this episode of The Critical Social Worker: A Revolutionary Storytelling Podcast, Deb Goldfarb — clinical social worker, Director of Behavioral Health for Population Health at Boston Medical Center, and part-time faculty at Boston University School of Social Work — traces her path from a pre-med student to homeless outreach, to Harvard Law's Criminal Justice Institute, to years as a therapist inside the state prisons, to building Project Evolve: a voluntary, trauma-focused behavioral health program for pretrial men.We talk about how you earn trust with people who "can smell bullshit from 10 miles away," why she hires staff with lived experience of incarceration and recovery, and what cultural responsiveness looks like in practice. Deb makes the case for joy as resistance, explains the therapy dog that changed her whole unit, and lays out the contradiction at the heart of drug policy — that we call addiction a disease and then punish it with jail. She shares the legislative work to stop judges from jailing people over a single relapse, her vision for marrying the healthcare and criminal legal systems, and why change is slow but possible.A hard, hopeful conversation about doing the work at the margins.— — —🎙️ The Critical Social Worker is hosted by Professor Ace (Christian Stettler), former Professor of Social Work at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.▶️ Subscribe on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thecriticalsocialworker?sub_confirmation=1🌐 Revolutionary Social Work: https://revolutionarysocialwork.com📧 Contact Professor Ace: [email protected] Deb Goldfarb:💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debgoldfarb/🏥 Boston Medical Center bio: https://www.bmc.org/about-us/directory/doctor/deborah-r-goldfarb-msw-licsw🎓 Boston University School of Social Work: https://www.bu.edu/ssw/profile/deborah-goldfarb/🔗 Project Evolve (BMC + Suffolk County Sheriff's Department): https://www.bmc.org/departments/psychiatry/project-evolve00:00 Intro00:50 Theme Song01:28 Meet Deb Goldfarb: From Pre-Med to Social Work09:03 Working the Criminal Legal System, From Defense to Prisons14:33 Building Project Evolve Inside the Jail17:50 The Therapy Dog & Joy as Resistance23:38 Earning Trust: "They Can Smell Bullshit From 10 Miles Away"28:03 Political Friction & Being the "Trojan Horse"32:06 What Abolition Actually Asks of Us33:32 Addiction, Relapse & the Limits of Abstinence38:38 Empathy and Accountability as Community Practice41:51 Jailing People for a Relapse: The Legislative Fight46:21 Bridging Healthcare and the Criminal Legal System48:55 Lived Experience on the Team, Without Exploiting It52:06 What Fills the Cup: Finding Joy in the Work#socialwork #criticalsocialwork #revolutionarysocialwork #projectevolve #prisonabolition #harmreduction #criminaljustice #socialworkpodcast #behavioralhealth© UAF Social Work