Mentoring after prison : recognition as a tool for reflection

Abstract

Many organisations offer mentoring schemes to support people leaving prison and resettle back into the community. Mentorship relationships are complex but despite this, there remains limited theoretical and/or research informed tools to guide mentorship practices and hereby the success of ex-prisoner mentorship. The aim of the paper is to contribute to this shortfall by presenting a theoretically informed framework to assist reflection on mentorship practices and the mentorship relationship: the Recognition Reflection Framework (RRF). The framework has potential to provide mentors with a tool to reflect on ex-prisoners´ need for recognition of worth if they are to desist from crime. The paper describes the theoretical development and preliminary validation of this reflection framework, underpinned by a strengths-based mentoring approach, and developed through the merger of concepts from recognition theory, person centred care and therapeutic alliances. We present this framework as a means through which mentors can reflect on how they may specifically contribute to secondary and tertiary desistance, as well as reflect on ways they can personally develop a constructive mentor-client relationship.

Mentoring after prison : recognition as a tool for reflection