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Mentoring has recently taken centre stage as one of the primary criminal justice 'interventions' to reduce reoffending, having grown in popularity over the past fifteen years. Its rapid growth has been driven by claims of success within and outwith the criminal justice system, leading some to argue that it has been perceived as a silver bullet (Newburn and Shiner, 2005). This article challenges such claims on three fronts: first, mentoring is an ill-defined concept with weak theoretical foundations; second, the evidence base upon which claims of success are made is limited; and third, transferring mentoring into the coercive and punitive environment of the criminal justice system results in a departure from the very principles and values which are the basis of its usefulness elsewhere. The article utilises the findings from three empirical criminal justice research projects to question claims of widespread and effective mentoring activity with defendants and offenders, suggesting instead that 'interventions' described as mentoring serve as a vehicle to extend the reach of the criminal justice system. At the end of the article we suggest that desistance theory, specifically the Good Lives Model, provides a conceptual framework for taking mentoring in criminal justice forward.

including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Gender, Recovery and Contemporary UK Drug Policy PurposeThe article provides a gendered reading of the 2010 UK drug strategy and draws out the implications of the new recovery paradigm for female drug users. DesignThe article explores the concept of recovery at a theoretical level, uncovering the taken-for-granted assumptions in the three overarching principles: freedom from dependence; well-being and citizenship. It also analyses the available quantitative and qualitativ access to recovery capital to explore the role gender might play in the journey to recovery. FindingsStrategic thinking around recovery in the UK is largely silent on gender. However, close scrutiny of the available, albeit limited, evidence base on female drug users and feminist scholarship on the principles of well-being and citizenship suggests the need to understand recovery against a backdrop Originality/value Recent analyses of contemporary UK drug policy have focused on the conflation of recovery with abstinence and the displacement of the harm reduction agenda. They have failed to draw out the implications for particular groups of drug users such as women.The pursuit of recovery-based drug policy is not peculiar to the UK so the article offers a case study of its gendered application in a particular national context.

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She has a broad range of research interests including addiction and recovery, violence, gambling and comparative studies.