Love, Healing and Empowerment: Lessons from a Credible Messenger Intervention

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

Over the course of five years a team of sociologists and criminologists carried out an evaluation study of a mentoring intervention program at the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services in Washington, D.C. Based on field observations, qualitative interviews with youth subjects, credible messenger mentors and a range of institutional social actors the data revealed a number of important insights into the processes, impacts and challenges of a program that could be read through multiple social scientific lenses. In this panel we offer presentations that combine theoretical, empirical and methodological analyses to highlight the following themes: gender relations, community impacts, pedagogical approaches, institutional change, mental health concerns and the praxes of transformative mentoring.

Sub Unit

• Area X. Critical Criminology / 79. Critical Perspectives in Criminology

Individual Presentations

• I AM MY SISTERS KEEPER: The Importance of Female Credible Messenger Mentorship Among Girls Impacted by Juvenile Detention - Bahiyyah MiAllah Muhammad, Howard University

• Credible Masculinity: Gender in the Mentoring Relationship Between Criminalized Black Men and Boys - Rodrigo Martinez, Howard University

• The Credible Messenger Mentoring Intervention’s Approach to the Problem of Stigmatized Identity - Louis Kontos, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• The Prison and Post-Prison Experience of a Credible Messenger - David Brotherton, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

Chair

• Daniel Kessler, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Discussant

• Alex Vitale, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Organized by a Division or external group?

Over the course of five years a team of sociologists and criminologists carried out an evaluation study of a mentoring intervention program at the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services in Washington, D.C. Based on field observations, qualitative interviews with youth subjects, credible messenger mentors and a range of institutional social actors the data revealed a number of important insights into the processes, impacts and challenges of a program that could be read through multiple social scientific lenses. In this panel we offer presentations that combine theoretical, empirical and methodological analyses to highlight the following themes: gender relations, community impacts, pedagogical approaches, institutional change, mental health concerns and the praxes of transformative mentoring.