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(en) Sweden, Stockholm, Megafonen statement on Stockholm riots 

Open letter from the Pantrarnas skrivgrupp (an anti-authoritarian community organizing 
group in Gothenburg) to their sister group Megafonen in Stockholm ---- First and foremost 
we are writing this for our brothers and sisters in Megafonen. We were speaking on the 
phone just now, and suddenly you stopped in the middle of a sentence, saying:--- "There's 
another car burning, we got to go". --- You are standing in the middle of the storm. Your 
world is burning. And we are writing this to tell you that we know what you are going 
through, that we admire how you've handled the events of the last few days. ---- A couple 
of years ago cars were burning in Biskopsg?rden. The cops did as they pleased those 
nights, and at the break of dawn the politicians did the same with words.

You know the score: the burnt-out cars, the broken glass on the streets: it seems like 
such an easy thing to condemn if you're seeing it from the outside. And now, that's what 
they demand from you when you are trying to say something about this uprising: you can 
never be allowed try to explain, you are just to join in the choir of condemnations; the 
choir saying that burning a car, smashing a window, is something unforgivable. But no 
matter what you say, it'll never be enough. For them, you'll never be able to write and 
say it enough times, despite having written and spoken about this so many times before: 
that you do not believe violence is a suitable method for achieving social change.

In TV studios and on the net, you are again and again doing the right thing when you 
persist in explaining the fires instead of just delivering blanket condemnations of the 
youths. Because those who condemn actions without trying to explain them are also 
condemning the thoughts and experiences that gave rise to these actions.

To those of you who are watching these events from the outside

we write this to ask you: Can you understand the hand which throws a rock at a police car? 
Could you even try to?

Imagine yourself as a kid, bullied for your accent and the way you look. The alienation. 
Pointless teachers sitting behind their desks earning their pointless wage. By lighting 
your first cigarette in primary you are hoping to become more accepted. You start hanging 
out with friends and together you try to roll with it. You become shaped by what you see.

Being strong is hard if there are no role models around. Maybe you don't have as good 
contact with your family as you could have. Maybe you lost your mother or father during 
the war in Iraq. Maybe you lost your siblings during the war in Afghanistan. War-injured 
in Palestine.

During your teenage years, there's nobody there to listen to you. There's no one you can 
turn to. You are trying to make a life for yourself, but there's nothing to do. You apply 
for job after job, but Daniel Svensson is chosen ahead of you every fucking single time. 
You start losing heart. Try to seek out other ways. Some of you end up taking a wrong 
turn, others come out OK.

There are many voices saying that you have to make it for yourself, but things aren't that 
easy. The pigs are constantly harassing you. Weed is abundant. There is an itching 
temptation in your hand. Will you do it, or back off? Mounting peer pressure, and you find 
yourself agreeing to things you'd never do on your own. You feel as if there's no future 
for you. You're standing there with a rock in your hand. You're standing there with your 
life in your hands. Are you going to throw?

Megafonen. We think you are correct in judging the events in your suburb this last week a 
community uprising. We believe it is correct to point out that what we are dealing with 
are youth riots, nor nonpolitical disturbances, but precisely an uprising; a reaction, 
which is what you wrote in your last communique: "unemployment, substandard schools, and 
structural racism are the root causes to today's events".

When you find yourselves wavering, ask yourself this: what had this week been like if you 
hadn't been there? Maybe a retired old man had been shot to death in his apartment in a 
suburb and no one would have cared. Maybe. That's an answer: if you hadn't taken a picture 
of the body bag that was smuggled out in the middle of the night, despite police claims 
that the man had died at a hospital several hours before?then perhaps no one would have 
cared, and it would all have been back to business as usual.

But caring about someone dying is doing the right thing. Demanding truth instead of lies 
when police talk to media about a dead body is doing the right thing.

When you organized the protest which some critics now single out as the spark which 
ignited the flames of revolt in the suburbs, you were doing the right thing.

Ask yourselves this: what is there to connect H?sselby or Fittja?where the summer night 
fires are also burning?with the man who was shot to death in an apartment in Husby? 
Nothing, maybe. What connection do you members of Megafonen have to the deceased? You 
didn't know him, he wasn't a relative. But there's something that connects us all. We feel 
sorrow when one of us dies. We stand in solidarity with each other. We live together, in 
our community.

We support you in every possible way. We know how frustrating it can feel standing where 
you are now standing, steadfastly trying to explain rather than condemn.

In Hammarkullen there are sometimes mounted police at the square. In Biskopsg?rden there 
are CCTV cameras that register whatever happens in the court yards. In Fr?lunda there are 
now rumors of commotions?calls and text messages whispering that maybe the uprising is 
spreading to Gothenburg, where we are struggling with the same kinds of problems as you in 
Stockholm: the militarization of the suburbs, the police brutality, the social regression. 
Summer is coming; yet another year. The sound of mopeds buzzing back and forth between the 
tower blocks. There's always this suffocating feeling in the suburbs. You know. The 
feeling that there's nobody listening, that no one is interested in stories about racist 
police, harassment, brutality. The feeling that maybe it takes fire for certain voices to 
be heard.

Now there are fires. We are standing here, together. Pantrarna and Megafonen.

If we didn't exist, who would then have taken on the responsibility of trying to 
understand the shadows roaming our streets with rocks in hand? These shadows who were born 
in Swedish hospitals and consequently registered at the Swedish tax agency; these shadows 
who have attended Swedish schools and who have hung out in youth Swedish youth centers and 
who want to work, pay taxes and die in this country, shadows that our Prime Minister still&n;t say anything and it seems like a really unfair question.  It paints the witness in a bad light, you know, kind of everything and it seems like it kind of misses the point.  Like if you asked a 5-year-old, “was that a good question?”  the 5-year-old would say “No. Bad question.” Right? But it seems to tip the scales.

Allan Barsky:  And you prefaced that by saying this is what we see on TV, so it absolutely is possible that you could be asked questions that are completely inappropriate.  And it could overruled as being too prejudicial or irrelevant or whatever, but the person still makes a point.  So, they ask you a question about, “Isn't it true that you were born in Kenya?” What relevance does that have to do with the case? But you know it's out there and so if people are discriminatory with people from Kenya, it might have an impact on them.

Most of the stuff that happens in court is a lot more boring than what you see on TV, but you still need to be prepared for some of the things that might come up and there are a lot of strategies that you can use.  So, for example, let's say that you're asked a really pointed question - or a series of questions - and you're not quite sure what to say. Do you know what you can say?  “Can I think about it for a minute” or “I don’t know the answer.” A lot of people think that they have to know the answers and it's okay. If you really don’t know, just say, “I don’t know…”  “I don’t have an opinion on this…”  “I don’t have a current recollection of this…”

Again, the most important thing when you're on the stand is to be honest. And people will see you as honest when you're not perfect.  If you look too perfect, sometimes that means that you're making up stuff - you’ve rehearsed it.  And so sometimes just being yourself, being honest, slowing things down, taking a deep breath, using the different things that you use in your ordinary life to decrease stress and anxiety, use those on the stand.  If you need to do something like twiddle your fingers, you can twiddle your fingers. But also look at, if you're twiddling your fingers, how might the jury or others perceive that and there's a lot of like simple strategies to do if you're asked a tough question by the cross-examining attorney.

Look them back in the eye.  Don’t look over to your client or to the attorney, because it looks like you're reaching for them to give an answer for you.  Another strategy might be something that just delays things a little bit if you're really under a lot of stress and you need a break.  You can say, “I need a bathroom break” or whatever it is that you need.  So, try to take some control for yourself.  I think the more people learn about the court process through observing, through reading, through talking to others, through role playing, the more empowered that they will be. And as social workers, you know, as professionals we want to look good on the stand.  We want to do good for our clients, but we also have to know at the end of the day we're supposed to be there to provide as truthful answers as possible. And that’s the basic end of it.

Jonathan Singer:  So obviously there are some domains of social work which have more interaction with the courts than others as you were alluding to earlier.  If you work in an area of social work that typically doesn’t have involvement with the courts and so this isn't part of your agency training, it's not something you think about very often, but you find yourself being called to court as a witness, what are some things that you should do?  How do you prepare?  How do you think about it?  What is your role?  All those sorts of things…

Allan Barsky:  I think one of the things to look at is, “What is the nature of the case,” and what is the nature of your role in that particular case.  So, if you don’t have the knowledge yourself or the experience in that particular type of case, then find somebody that does.  Ideally, it would be someone in your agency.  There's more and more people out there who’ve got dual backgrounds in social work and law, or mental health and the law, so those people can be really helpful.  It may be that the person calling you to court is a friendly lawyer, somebody who’s on the same side of the case that you or your client would want to pursue.

And so that person might be able to prepare you and educate you and even do some role plays to help you prepare for it.  But you also have to remember that even if there is an attorney to prepare you, who’s paying for that attorney? Because a lot of times, it's hundreds of dollars per hour and they may have limited time. And some attorneys are better than others at preparing their witnesses.  So ideally, yes, you would get prepared by the attorney who’s calling you as a witness, but that’s not always the case.  You might need to take on some of the responsibility yourself.

One way to prepare is to actually go observe cases that are similar. If you're called to a child protection hearing, usually those are closed to the public, but you could go to the court administrator and ask if you’d be able for professional purposes to observe some hearings and to be able to see people in action and how they respond to different questions and things like that.  You could read various textbooks.  It doesn’t have to be my textbook, but there are a lot of tips and strategies on how to respond to different types of things.

A lot of times, people want to tell their story. They think that all the information that they have is important and should be shared. And they get really frustrated because you can only answer the questions that the attorneys ask and there may be objections to the types of information that you're providing.  If you're a fact witness, you're only there to provide the facts.  To provide opinions, you have to be qualified as an expert witness.  That means the court says that you're qualified to give opinions and so a lot of people if they were called to court they would think “Well, I'm a professional so of course I'm an expert.”  But you're not always an expert in the area that you're giving the opinion unless the court says that you are.

Jonathan Singer:  I think that brings up a really interesting distinction.  There's a witness, right and then there's the expert witness and you alluded to this idea of sort of fact versus opinion.  Could you elaborate on that and then talk a little bit about what happens if somebody gets called to be an expert witness, what that means and what that might entail.

Allan Barsky:  Sure.  It helps to understand the legal system and how our trials work.  In a court system, the people responsible for making the decisions are the jury (if there is a jury) or the judge (if there's no jury).  And so they're supposed to make the decisions on fact. It's the witnesses who provide the information or the evidence to help them to determine those facts, so ordinarily the court does not like people giving them opinions.  So, the social worker he should not walk into court and saying she’s guilty or she should have custody or she should – you're not supposed to make the decision for the judge or the decision for the jury.

Now, courts have recognized over the years that there are occasions when it is helpful for the court to be educated by someone who has more expertise than the judge does themselves. In Family Law cases for example, a judge doesn’t want to have to make a decision about where children should live or how they spent time with each of their parents without having in depth knowledge about child development issues and family issues and somebody who’s actually observed - and in a scientific way - evaluated what's going on in the family.

So, they’ll want to have experts come in. Judges will want to hear people who have expertise in a particular area give their opinions.  Now ideally the expert is somebody who is neutral and impartial. In some types of cases, the courts will actually not hear people who are hired by one party or another.  In other types of cases, there is a competition between the plaintiffs and the defendant’s attorneys - and each of the experts that they will provide - so you’ve got dueling experts and you need to know what exactly is your role as an expert.

Are you there to explain complex psychological and social issues?  Are you there to conduct an assessment or an evaluation, applying your knowledge and expertise?  Are you there to give opinions or are you there just to explain?

Jonathan Singer:  It's really interesting.  So, we've touched on a couple of things that social workers should know about, everything from documentation to examination – cross examination.  You’ve mentioned some terms like discovery, deposition and things like that that some folks might not know what they mean but are important for understanding the legal system.  Now, you have a second edition of your text “Clinicians in Court:  A Guide to Subpoenas, Depositions, Testifying and Everything Else You Need to Know,” so what are – what is everything else that somebody needs to know that they would find in your text?

Allan Barsky:  One of the areas that we start off with is being a good reflective practitioner, and what does it mean to be called into court and working with attorneys and working with judges? A lot of us as social workers might have some negative opinions of the justice system because we've seen it being used against our clients in ways that we don’t think are fair to our clients. It's important just to have an understanding of how are social workers similar to or different from lawyers, how is participating in a legal system different from the ordinary types of help that we provide as social workers.

Also, how can we conduct our practice in ways that’s more likely to keep us out of court? If we keep really good records, and if we write our reports and write our assessments in particular ways, it's not just helpful to us, it's helpful to our clients.  A lot of times it's strong facts, strong evidence that wins cases - not strong witnesses. Lawyers will sometimes say “If it's not in paper, it didn’t happen. “If we take good notes and we write things down and it's a he said, she said situation, your written notes are the thing that might trump everything else. The attorneys will see that ahead of time and they’ll hopefully negotiate a solution rather than have to fight it out in trial.

What a great gift that you can give to your client - just to save them a court case.  You know, the time and the expense and the aggravation and everything else. It's much better if you can do things in a way that keeps you and your clients out of court.  So, we have some information about things on managing your practice and that includes avoiding malpractice situations and risk management.  So, let's say that you're engaged in an area of practice that’s somewhat risky and you’ve got a risky intervention with your clients. What can you do with your informed consent process, with ensuring the clients really understand, with your insurance companies, with your agency policies, etc. to make sure if something negative does happen, you’ve got a way to cover for that?

Even managing our responses to clients when they have grievances. A lot of times when the client complains, we think, “Oh, we've got to call in the lawyers.” And it may be absolutely true that you need to have some legal advice. But be careful about a lawyer who says okay, “We have to stop serving this client,” just cut them off.  Well, we've got an obligation not to abandon our clients, number one.  Also, we might be able to save the relationship.  It may be through apology.  It may be through compensation.  It may be through just good counseling that, you know, find out what this client really wants.

They may not want to go to court and sometimes a client who feels heard and feels like their concerns are validated, they're going to get more from that and they would get from court anyhow.  We're lucky a little bit as social workers because most clients and attorneys don’t think we have a lot of money, so we're not worth suing. But there still are cases against us and grievances against us.  Some of the things in the book focus primarily on clinicians in court literally, but also there's a lot of strategies that would be useful regardless of the type of hearing.  So people will more likely as social workers come before a licensing board than before a court in terms of client grievances. You can use a lot of the strategies if you're dealing with a licensing board as well.

Jonathan Singer:  That sounds like a really valuable text to have whether you're in agency setting or in private practice, whether you're preparing for a court case or you just want to try and avoid going to court if possible.  To be fair and balanced, are there other resources for social workers who are interested in learning about courts or just for the legal side of it that you could recommend.

Allan Barsky:  You know there are all sorts of forensic associations and national associations of forensic social work and psychology and also psychiatry.  Also, it depends really on the field of practice that you're in - The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, if you're involved in family law or juvenile justice.  There are restorative justice organizations for criminal law and alternatives to criminal court. If you're involved in child welfare, the child welfare information gateway is just a phenomenal resource.  Look at the various sections of the NASW because they’ve got forensic areas and areas that cross over into forensic areas.  Oxford Bibliographies online has a whole list of resources that are related to social work and the law, including the court system and even beyond.

Jonathan Singer:  That’s great.  Well, Allan thanks so much for talking with us about Clinicians in Court, and I hope that the folks who are listening will feel a little bit either more prepared or a little more appropriately anxious, and will therefore be better providers.  So, thanks a lot.  I appreciate it.

Allan Barsky:  Thank you very much.  Have a great day.



~~END~~

References and Resources (provided by Allan Barsky)


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  • Madden, R. G. (2003). Essential law for social workers. New York: Columbia University Press.
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  • NASW Legal Defense Fund. (2010). Social workers and confidentiality for court-ordered juvenile treatment. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkers.org/ldf/legal_issue/2009/200910.asp?back=yes.
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Professional Associations with Interest in Forensic Practice


APA (6th ed) citation for this podcast:
Singer, J. B. (Host). (2012, December 18). Social workers in court: Interview with Allan Barsky, JD, MSW, PhD [Episode 76]. Social Work Podcast. Podcast retrieved Month Day, Year, from http://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2012/12/social-workers-in-court-interview-with.html