Premium
Politicisation or Professionalisation? Exploring Divergent Aims Within UK Voluntary Sector Peer Mentoring
Author(s) -
BUCK GILLIAN
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the howard journal of crime and justice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.462
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 2059-1101
pISSN - 2059-1098
DOI - 10.1111/hojo.12305
Subject(s) - punitive damages , voluntary sector , public relations , criminal justice , citizen journalism , politics , social work , sociology , agency (philosophy) , action (physics) , work (physics) , political science , criminology , law , social science , mechanical engineering , engineering , physics , quantum mechanics
Meaningful ‘user involvement’ is an established aim of social work practice, and increasingly, an aspiration of criminal justice, yet there are unique challenges to participatory work within punitive contexts. Drawing upon a study of peer mentoring in the voluntary sector, this article unveils some core tensions related to (ex)service user involvement in criminal justice. Interviews with mentors, mentees, and key stakeholders, along with direct observations of practice, reveal that respondents often see their work as personal‐political, emphasising the value of lived expertise and of collective action to address limiting social conditions. Simultaneously, however, mentoring is framed nationally and shaped locally by more established aims to correct, improve, and manage, individual ‘offenders’. There is, therefore, a fundamental tension between processes of politicisation, or coming together to assert a user voice and affect social change; and professionalisation, wherein mentors are co‐opted into forms of practice they often critique.