Peer Mentoring in Criminal Justice

Gillian Buck is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Chester. Her research interests include peer led services, criminal justice, youth justice and the voluntary sector. Before working in research and teaching, Gill spent eight years as a Social Worker in a youth offending team.

The criminal justice system has become a dustbin for failed public policy. This book’s in-depth and timely consideration of peer mentoring both extends understanding of a crucial participatory approach to this setting and helps offer practical routes out. A must-read text for both professionals and those on the receiving end of criminal justice.Peter Beresford, Professor of Citizen Participation, University of Essex and Co-Chair, Shaping Our Lives, the national service user-led organization."Peer mentoring in criminal justice has a long history, but a remarkably thin theoretical and research base, considering the rich potential of this work to transform our ideas about criminality and the justice process. Buck’s comprehensive treatment of the subject is exactly what is needed, therefore -- a genuine breakthrough that will become a sort of ‘bible’ for future research in this area."Shadd Maruna, Professor of Criminology, Queen’s University Belfast"Gill Buck’s important new book takes our understanding of mentoring to an entirely new level, exploring not just its relationship with desistance from crime but also its complex, contested and emergent role in criminal justice and its reform. In revealing how mentoring interacts with questions of identity, agency, values, change and power, this book will intrigue, inspire and challenge students, practitioners and scholars of criminal and social justice alike."Fergus NcNeill, Professor of Criminology & Social Work, University of GlasgowThis book takes us beyond aspirational and fashionable approaches to desistance by making a compelling case - both critically and in practice - for participatory self-determination on the part of those with experience of criminal punishment. In Peer Mentoring in Criminal Justice, Gillian Buck retrieves traditions of radical pedagogy and self-help movements to present a contemporary way forward for sustainable recovery from criminalisation.Mary Corcoran, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Director of programmes in Criminology, Keele University

• 1.Introduction: Peer Mentoring in Criminal Justice 2.The penal voluntary sector, peer mentoring, and desistance from crime 3.Theorising peer mentoring as a critical relational practice: pedagogy, identity and collective politicisation 4.The research field 5.The importance of identity to peer mentoring 6.Agency, action and acknowledgement in peer mentoring 7.The Values and ‘Core Conditions’ of Peer Mentoring 8.The terror, complexity and limits of change 9. The hidden power dynamics of peer mentoring 10.Conclusion