Peer Mentoring in a Women's Prisons as a Form of Social Rehabilitation Through Crime Desistance

Résumé fourni par la source

The concept of mentoring is well-established within areas of professional development and education, and is now widely used within a youth justice context, but is only more recently becoming a popular development within rehabilitation services for adult offenders. Traditional mentoring approaches were initially established in the United States as a response to issues of social marginalisation and welfare, where Newburn and Shiner state that mentoring was offered as a solution to these problems and with the capacity of being able to offer ‘great promise and almost limitless potential’. For Farrall et al., relationships and social interactions are seen as a catalyst for the desistance process, suggesting that relationships are a crucial component in changing individual identities, developing coping mechanisms and offering opportunities for successful reintegration post-release from prison. Drawing upon this line of research, this chapter explores mentoring as a social rehabilitative method through the use of peer mentoring programmes inside a female prison in England. It notably seeks to examine how the relationships that form between mentor and mentee can act as a positive social connection for women, and by drawing on qualitative accounts of incarcerated women examines the extent to which peer mentoring can support the process of desistance.

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