Peer mentoring justice-involved youth: a training model to promote secondary desistance and restorative justice among mentors

Abstract

This article introduces a mentoring programme for justice-involved youth that uti‐ lises the unique and often overlooked resources offered by adults with a history of incarceration, and the innovative training model that aims to promote secondary desistance and restorative justice among the mentors. An examination of the gen‐ erative role of peer mentoring and its overlap with restorative justice as a healing process that provides opportunities for offenders to make indirect amends that con‐ tribute to the social rehabilitation of their communities is presented. An overview of the history and anticipated aims of mentoring programmes for justice-involved youth is provided, followed by a discussion of the importance of secondary desist‐ ance in peer mentoring programmes and a review of the elements, conceptual underpinnings and anticipated benefits of the training programme for the mentors. The training programme is argued to offer approaches that support the primary and secondary desistance-orientated changes and the reparative work needed within the mentor.