NASW Pioneers Biography Index

Pioneering Contributions

The pioneering efforts of M. Patricia O’Brien, PhD, MSW, connect academia, advocacy, and social reform through transformative feminist practice. Her passion throughout her career has been securing social justice for the most disadvantaged, in particular women.  Feminist practice comprises much of the focus of O’Brien’s research and service.  In 1999 and 2002, Dr. O’Brien received feminist scholarship awards from the Council on Social Work Education Women’s Commission (now Council).  

O’Brien is a pioneer in research on feminist practice and carceral corrections, with an emphasis on advocacy and transformative social justice. As one of the earliest researchers in social work to focus on incarcerated women, O’Brien’s research was the first of its kind. Her groundbreaking dissertation research pioneered work on the “hidden population” of women in, and exiting prison. This work also focused on the strengths of women and their pathways, with a focus on those who made a successful exit from prison, rather than the typical approach or view of expected recidivism or failure. Unusual then and now, her dissertation was published as a book: O’Brien, P. (2001). Making It in the “Free World”: Women in Transition from Prison. New York: SUNY Press. 

Career Highlights

 O’Brien’s social work direct practice for more than ten years focused on working with battered women and their children in multiple sites. She was the initial staff member and crisis counselor for a shelter in Kansas City, KS. This gave her the experience to work with a community group to initiate and develop another shelter across the county line where she served as Executive Director for six years and established a number of programs. Moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, O’Brien again served for five years as Executive Director at Advocates for Battered Women, making the program into a fully operational crisis center. 

Her life as a practitioner in Little Rock shifted when on a late Friday, she received a request from the brother of a woman who had been arrested and charged in the murder of her spouse. He asked her to visit her in the county jail where she was being held. She went the next day and met “Mary” who began to describe multiple years of abuse prior to the shooting fatality in which she was charged. O’Brien spent the next year, in consultation with Sue Ostoff, the Director and Co-Founder of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women working with the assigned public defender to both understand the mitigating factors related to Mary’s shooting of the victim and to prepare for testifying at the upcoming trial. In the end, her testimony was not supported by the public defender, and evidence that might have supported Mary’s claim of self-defense was not considered by the jury. She was summarily convicted of 2nd degree murder and sent to the women’s prison in Pine Bluff to serve 6 to 10 years. After talking further with a criminal law firm in the state capital of Little Rock, O’Brien got into organizing mode. She raised money and got the law firm to take up Mary’s case on appeal. They produced a brief based on “ineffective counsel” (the lack of a defense) and Mary was released after serving a few years in prison. She was “free” but the trauma she endured, and the impact of the trial and time in jail and prison was profound. She was subsequently convicted with a prison associate of a fraud charge and returned to prison. O’Brien was left wondering “Why?” and “Where were the social workers?” Those two burning questions then propelled her into the PhD program at the University of KS-School of Social Welfare, where she had completed her MSW ten years before. 

O’Brien’s dissertation study gave her the opportunity to initiate a study of women exiting state and federal prison in Kansas and along the way develop her skills in qualitative methods. The dissertation became Making It in the Free World, notable not only for it being one of the first studies to investigate how women negotiated reentry after release from prison, but also for its examination of women who made it after release rather than the usual focus on failure or recidivism. The dissertation provided the basis for continuing research on re-entry once she arrived as a faculty member at UIC-Jane Addams College of Social Work. Initially, this work was supported by small grants, and finally, a major grant on the second try from the National Institute of Justice to enact a statewide study following women out of prison in Illinois. During this time of active research development, she worked with community partners to describe the needs of women exiting prison. These studies all pointed to similar conclusions: that women exiting prison needed the same basic things that any of us need for well-being. Her research also documented that as the number of convicted women increased, especially for drug crimes, resources for supporting women to “make it” were shrinking. 

Another shift in O’Brien’s pioneering work evolved when in 2014 after passage of reform legislation in Great Britian, she was invited to write an opinion piece in The Conversation considering the elimination of prison for women (“The case for closing down women’s prisons” (https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-closing-down-womens-prisons-33000). The piece was published internationally and reprinted in multiple online sites. She received hate mail and ugly voice mail messages for daring to express these views. It was a scary time, but O’Brien found allies among a national roster of activists, including social workers who talked about prison abolition in multiple venues because they recognized policy changes were insufficient to address the massive harms of the current penal system that rested on a racist foundation of punishment.

As O’Brien began to read work by Mariame Kaba and Beth Richie and learn from system-impacted advocates, she realized that what she most needed to do was explore and write about how social workers could move from working from within the system as it is, and begin to challenge and work with others for transformation. That became the impetus for Anti-oppressive Social Work and the Carceral State co-written with Judith Willison, one of her former doctoral students, and published by Oxford University Press in 2022. In the book, O’Brien and Willison aim to describe the racist underpinnings of the criminal legal system, its massive and continuing harms, and provide social workers avenues for transformative methods using an anti-oppressive lens consistent with social work values.

Biographic Information

O’Brien was born on September 19, 1955 in Denver, Colorado. Her parents divorced soon after she was born and Patricia was raised by her father as an only child in Springfield, Missouri. O'Brien was a “troubled” child who early learned self-reliance and resilience. She believes that her “making it” began when she was encouraged by a high-school counselor to seek college despite not having the best grades or having financial support.  With multiple sources of financial aid and scholarships, she attended a small all-girls college, Saint Mary College (now the University of Saint Mary) in Leavenworth, KS and earned a BA degree in 1977. At Saint Mary’s she was exposed to fantastic teaching and a liberal arts education with a strong focus on compassion and service. While the College was in the process of developing a social work program, it was not accredited prior to her graduation. With few options for employment after graduation, she chose to volunteer as a live-in manager at a women’s halfway house in Houston, TX. That rich experience sent her running back to school and in 1980, O'Brien completed her MSW in Community Intervention at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. In 1997, O'Brien obtained a PhD in Social Work, also at the School of Social Welfare.

Social work became her vehicle when she discovered the power of the strength’s perspective at every level of intervention for change. O’Brien indicates that she had crucial and activist mentors in both the MSW and PhD programs such as Norm Forer, Ed Dutton, Liane Davis, Alice Lieberman, and Dennis Saleebey.   
She started her career as a social worker in the area of violence against women. . Her positions included Program Director, Wyandotte County Domestic Violence Shelter, Kansas City, KS (1980-1981); Founder/Executive Director, Johnson County Safehome, Overland Park, KS (1981-1986); Executive Director, Advocates for Battered Women, Little Rock, AR (1986-1988); and State Coordinator, Arkansas Child Abuse Prevention/Children’s Trust Fund (1988-1990). 

It was through her extensive practice with victims of domestic violence that O'Brien became a leader in this area. Domestic violence, then referred to as battered women, emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s, through the work of the women’s movement.  The passage of the Violence Against Women Act did not occur until 1994.  Thus, O'Brien's work in this area was pioneering in its incorporation of feminist social work practice with victims of domestic violence.  It was during her time with the Kansas Coalition against Domestic Violence and the Arkansas Child Abuse Prevention that she was most engaged with the statewide NASW in shared advocacy.

O’Brien also emphasized bringing her research, teaching and service together as one. As a faculty person at the University of Illinois Chicago for 20 years, she linked her research on criminalized women to her teaching by creating a course on social work in corrections that included both social work and criminology/law/justice students, engaging countless students in her research projects, and has co-authored five articles with students. Unique among faculty at the Jane Addams College of Social Work was O’Brien’s creation of electives that were cross-listed with other departments. These included Social Work with Women (Gender and Women Studies), and Social Work in Corrections (Criminology, Law, and Justice). These cross-listed courses became a part of an interdepartmental graduate concentration sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Violence.

Her extensive advising includes involvement as Chair or Committee Member in 31 PhD dissertations, at UIC and other schools, including the social work program at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her leadership brought attention to issues such as formerly incarcerated African American women, disabled women, women’s pathways in and out of crime, Black Muslim women experiencing domestic violence, and homophobia among school social workers. In 2016–17, she supervised an Honors College student’s capstone project, a re-analysis of data from O’Brien’s National Institute of Justice-funded study on recidivism and reentry of women exiting prison in Illinois. 

Notable in O’Brien’s career is her service to local, state, and national organizations that continues to the present day. O’Brien’s lengthy list of civic and professional leadership and service includes: 

Organizing the first ever and second Women’s March (2018,2019) soon after she moved to her new residence in Pueblo, CO where she knew few residents.

City-appointed Pueblo Human Relations Commission member (2018-2021)

• United Way of Pueblo County Community Investment Committee (2018-2023)
• El Movimiento Sigue, Pueblo, CO-Project Coordinator, Transforming Justice (2021-2023)
• Member and Treasurer, Women Suffrage Centennial, Southern Colorado (2018-2024)
• Member and Executive Board member, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-Pueblo, CO Chapter (2018-2024)
• Member, Editorial Board: AFFILIA: Journal of Women and Social Work, 2009-2012, Book Review Editor (2011- 2017); Women in Social Work Board President (2018-2024)
• IL Department of Corrections Steering Committee, Reentry Grant (2014-2017)
• LGBT Giving Council, Chicago Foundation for Women (2013-2016)
• Site Coordinator, Unsettling Feminisms International Conference, UIC (2011)
• Board of Directors, North Lawndale Employment Network, Chicago (2010-2013); Advisory Board & Program Committee (2013-2015)
• Board of Directors, Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers, 2007-2010 
• Advisory Board, Grace House (2002-2008) 
• Board of Directors, National Runaway Switchboard (1999-2003)
• CLAIM(Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers)(1998-2004)
• Chairperson, Juvenile and Criminal Justice Track, Council on Social Work Education (2011-2015)
• National Institute of Corrections: Understanding the Revocation of Women on Probation in Minnesota (2007-2008)
• Co-developed curriculum for training probation officers (2004-2006)
• Council on Social Work Education, Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education, 2005-2011 (co-Chair, 2007-2011)

Significant Achievements and Awards
 

• Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Illinois Chicago (2017)
• Teaching Recognition Award from the UIC Council for Excellence in Teaching (2000–01)
• Excellence in Social Work Education, Jane Addams College of Social Work (2012) 
• The Council on Social Work,  Scholarship Award (2017)
• Pueblo, CO: Women’s History Month, Notable Women Award (2022)
• League of Women Voters, Making Democracy Work Award (2018)
• Hull House Museum-NEH Faculty Fellowship, “Securing the Common Good” (2016-2017)
• Jane Addams College of Social Work, Excellence in Social Work Education (2012)
• National Institutes of Health Summer Institute on Behavioral and Social Intervention Research: Washington, DC (2005).
• Council on Social Work Education Women’s Commission: Josefina Figueira-McDonough Feminist Scholarship Award (2002)
• Council on Social Work Education Women’s Commission, Barbara Solomon Feminist Scholarship Award, (1999)

Significant Publications 

• O’Brien, P., & Willison, J. (2022). Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice and the Carceral State. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Schwartz, J., O’Brien, P., & Lurigio, A. (Eds.) (2006). Drugs, Women, and Justice: Roles of the Criminal Justice System for Drug-Affected Women. West Hazleton, PA: Haworth Press.
• O’Brien, P., & Lee, N. (2006). Moving from needs to self-efficacy: A holistic system for women in transition from prion. Women & Therapy. 29(3/4), 261-284.  
• O’Brien, P. (2012). Maximizing success for drug-affected women after release from prison: Examining access to and use of social services during reentry. Women and Criminal Justice, 17(2/3), 95-113.  
• Willison, J. & O’Brien, P. (2017). A feminist call for transforming the criminal justice system. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 32(1), 37-49
• O’Brien, P. (2001). Making It in the “Free World”: Women in Transition from Prison. New York: SUNY Press.
• O’Brien, P. (2001). “Just like baking a cake”: Women describe the necessary ingredients for successful reentry after incarceration. Families in Society, 82(3), 287-295.