Peer mentoring is an increasing feature of UK criminal justice, yet very little known about the micro dynamics this practice. Drawing upon ethnographic study, article identifies a number ‘core conditions’ underpinning practice, including caring, listening and encouraging small steps. Mentors mentees highlight these conditions as antidotes to what they often perceive disconnected, unhearing technocratic justice practices. claimed release suffering, unburden self grief explore new directions,...

The penal voluntary sector (PVS) is an important, complex, under-theorized area. Its non-profit, non-statutory organizations are highly significant in the operation of punishment around world, yet ill understood. Burgeoning scholarship has begun to examine specific parts sector, particularly individualized service delivery. We offer a five-paradigm framework that more fully conceptualizes PVS, including different types delivery and important campaigning work. Our hybrid applies extends...

Despite growing enthusiasm for peer mentoring as a criminal justice intervention, very little is known about what actually happens within these relationships. Drawing on an ethnographic study of in the North England this article will foreground concept "inspiration" settings. It argue that Rene Girard's theory mimesis offers framework with which to analyze role modeling relationships and Girardian reading also interesting insights into unresolved problem origins personal change.

The voluntary sector acts as the last line of defense for some most marginalized people in societies around world, yet its capacities are significantly reduced by chronic resource shortages and dynamic political obstacles. Existing research has scarcely examined what it is like practitioners working amidst these conditions. In this paper, we explore how penal across England Scotland marshaled their personal professional resources to "keep going" significant challenges. Our analysis combines...

Peer-led approaches hold unique and innovative potential as a response to child sexual exploitation (CSE), yet little is known about such in this field. This study aims increase understanding by listening young people using one service. Qualitative methods were adopted an attempt understand how make sense of peer mentoring, data collected through self-completion booklets, interviews focus group, analysed thematic analysis Gilligan's guide (see Kiegelmann, 2009). Given the small local sample,...

Abstract Increasing calls for ‘nothing about us without us’ envision marginalized people as valuable and necessary contributors to policies practices affecting them. In this paper, we examine what type of inclusion feels like criminalized who share their lived experiences in penal voluntary sector organizations. Focus groups conducted England Scotland illustrated how work was experienced both safe, inclusionary rewarding exclusionary, shame-provoking precarious. We highlight these tensions...

Abstract Lived experience leadership is part of a broader international trend towards service user involvement in public services yet little known about developed and delivered by people with lived the criminal justice system. Our innovative study, coproduced two formerly imprisoned community practitioners an academic researcher, aims to amplify voices delivering using experience-led crime prevention project. Using photovoice methods, which use cameras document their realities advocate for...

Abstract Volunteers and voluntary organisations play significant roles pervading criminal justice. They are key actors, with unrecognised potential to shore up justice and/or collaboratively reshape social Unlike public for‐profit agents, volunteers (CJVVOs) have been neglected by scholars. We call for analyses of diverse CJVVOs, in national comparative contexts. provide three categories highlight distinctive organising auspices, which hold across justice: statutory volunteers,...

Abstract Meaningful ‘user involvement’ is an established aim of social work practice, and increasingly, aspiration criminal justice, yet there are unique challenges to participatory within punitive contexts. Drawing upon a study peer mentoring in the voluntary sector, this article unveils some core tensions related (ex)service user involvement justice. Interviews with mentors, mentees, key stakeholders, along direct observations reveal that respondents often see their as personal‐political,...

Research is critical for effective and innovative social work practice, yet workers do not always have time to engage with research there are limited accounts of how practitioners can undertake in practical meaningful terms (Mitchell, Lunt, Shaw 2010). Using a reflective, storytelling methodology (Beresford Citation2016), which centres experiential knowledge, we describe one regional teaching partnership nurtured practitioner over three-year period. We introduce regionally administrated...

Prison suicide is a global concern, with rates consistently exceeding those in non-incarcerated populations. Prisoners deliver (suicide prevention) initiatives jurisdictions around the world. As part of research project seeking to foreground prisoner voices criminological knowledge, former prisoners and academics coproduced an innovative, retrospective examination peer-delivered prison prevention England. Our collaborative, autoethnographic design involved focus group discussions co-authored...

This article draws upon an ethnographic study of peer mentoring in the United Kingdom criminal justice system. It examines how people attempting to desist from lifestyles often experience a period crisis, characterized by unsettling practical and personal losses. Through interviews with mentors mentees, observations practices, this renders sense adversity visible. also reveals ways which may alleviate weight providing blueprint change, while appearing be nonauthoritarian. These are important...

Increasing calls for ‘nothing about us without us’ envision marginalized people as valuable and necessary contributors to policies practices affecting them. In this paper, we examine what type of inclusion feels like criminalized who share their lived experien

In England and Wales, criminal reoffending costs £18 billion annually. Securing employment can support desistance from crime, but only 17% of ex-prisoners are employed a year after release. Understanding the motivations employers who do recruit criminalised people therefore represents an important area inquiry. This article draws upon qualitative interviews with 12 business leaders in proactively employ people. Findings reveal that inclusive recruitment be (indirectly) encouraged by planning...

Prisoners are a critical source of prison regulation around the world, but by (rather than of) prisoners remains little analysed. In this article, we utilise 1990 riots at HMP Strangeways (England), as case study (re)shaping imprisonment. We examine prisoners’ roles in these and subsequent cross-sectoral regulatory activities. innovatively use four-phase process translation from actor-network theory to guide document analysis (1) Lord Woolf’s official inquiry into (2) voluntary organisation...

Abstract Metaphors pervade media and political constructions of crime justice, provoking responses shaping actions. Scholarship in adjacent disciplines illustrates that emotion-metaphors offer unique insight into emotional interpretive processes, valuably illuminating sense-making, problem solving action. Yet, metaphors are rarely analysed within criminology, leaving an important opportunity for theorizing emotions their implications largely unrealized. We explore the analytical theoretical...

To improve inclusion in one social work teaching department, a 'Students-as-Partners' project employed four students with lived experience of neurodiversity to partnership staff on pedagogical design. The student partners' role was evaluate and learning through neurodivergent lenses co-design strategies enhance provision. Higher education can often adopt an individualized, adaptive approach difference , rather than where whole courses environments are designed neurotypical learners mind....

Persons with albinism experience visual impairments and have unusually white hair skin colour. In Nigeria, they face social disadvantages due to misconceptions about albinism, which create barriers equal participation in education, employment, society. This study explored the life stories of persons Nigeria understand meanings ascribe their experiences. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology, forty-two interviews were conducted eleven albinism. 'Being Different' emerged as main...

Abstract This study details the coproduction approach taken by Red Rose Recovery (RRR), a non-profit organization that coproduces recovery systems with people affected substance use and criminalization. RRR is ‘lived-experience-led’ in those who manage work for their own experiences of or desistance from crime to provide inspiration hope others. We explored people’s working using ‘photovoice’ research design, where cameras document realities. Data were analysed collaboratively, offering...