Analysis: Youth justice - Does mentoring cut reoffending?
By Alison Bennett
Children & Young People Now
17 September 2008
Charities claim mentoring schemes can prevent young prisoners reoffending after they are released, but this support isn't widely available. Alison Bennett looks at the arguments for and against a central strategy for mentoring in custody.
Junior Smart is a mentor for the SOS project in the London Borough of Southwark. The scheme works with young prisoners who have links to criminal gangs - and it is proving successful. Smart says that in the past two years only one in 10 of the 18- to 25-year-olds he has mentored have gone on to commit further crimes. This compares with the average...