Role Models or Gateways to Resources?: Contemporary Confusions in Mentoring Practice

Abstract

Mentoring has become increasingly popular in recent years in the criminal justice system, presented across the UK and internationally as a service that can address the specific ‘needs’ of women. This article draws on original qualitative research with mentors and mentees to explore their experiences and to establish the aims and processes of mentoring. The rhetoric of mentoring offered by mentors and staff suggested that mentoring was based on an individualistic approach that contained responsibilising strategies. In practice, however, mentors were helping women to resolve issues related to the welfare system and other services outwith the criminal justice system. If positive outcomes of mentoring are viewed by policymakers to be the result of an individualistic approach aimed at fostering ‘prosocial’ interventions, rather than the result of attempts to mitigate wider structural failures then this takes responsibility away from the State and distracts from the deeper effects of criminalising processes.

‘A wee kick up the arse’: Mentoring, motivation and desistance from crime

“…The development of future identities can be frustrated by structural barriers (King, 2013b), such as the difficulties in finding employment referred to in the interviews. Mentors often have to try to fix problems that sit outside the criminal justice system (Tolland and Malloch, 2019). It may be difficult to maintain motivation in the face of constant knockbacks, suggesting the need to address these issues, and a wider advocacy role for mentors to address systemic issues.…”

“…Buck's (2017) work on mentoring and mimesis suggests that people imitate others, yet because of the strong social convention of 'choosing your own path', they deny that they are miming, instead presenting their decisions as their own, even while acknowledging external influences. This partly explains why mentors often describe their work as 'role modelling' whereas mentees do not (see Tolland and Malloch, 2019).…”