Children’s Voices—are we Listening? Progressing Peer Mentoring in the Youth Justice System

ABSTRACT

Whilst there is research evidence on the benefits of mentoring and its non-significant effects, the practice of peer mentoring in the Youth Justice System has received little empirical attention. This paper seeks to critically explore the benefits, limitations and challenges of using young offenders as peer mentors. First, the paper reviews relevant literature. Second, it explains the aims and methodology of the study. Third, the paper presents the findings and discussion. Findings suggest that young offenders who are peer mentors have experiential knowledge and can act as positive role models and sources of hope, potentially helping mentees to (re)engage with services. Findings also suggest that young people particularly value building empathic and collaborative relationships with professionals who are ex-offenders and have lived experiences of contact with the criminal justice system. The article also introduces issues and challenges associated with peer mentoring, notably professionals being risk avoidant and disinclined to use young offenders as peer mentors. It also draws on a participant-led music project as a potentially useful means of integrating peer mentoring. The evidence from the study suggests that children and young people’s active and meaningful participation in this project can help to facilitate the process of change, including healing, growth and identity transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Children's voices
• peer mentoring
• participation
• young offenders
• youth justice
• music
• relationships

Acknowledgments

The author thanks all the young people, managers and practitioners who participated in the research. The author would also like to gratefully acknowledge the support of Professor Roger Smith, Dr Janet Jamieson and Susan Gillen who provided helpful comments on earlier drafts. The author also thanks the anonymous peer reviewers appointed by the journal for their constructive feedback and insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sean Creaney is a Lecturer in Psychosocial Analysis of Offending Behaviour at Edge Hill University and a PhD Criminology student at Liverpool John Moores University. His research interests include children's participation and service user involvement in the Youth Justice System.

ORCID

Sean Creaney http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0187-8889

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.