The mentoring of offenders is one of the most promising pathways to rehabilitation in today’s criminal justice system. It is about to move from the margins of UK rehabilitation practice to the mainstream of national policy, thanks to recent developments in the Government’s strategy for Transforming Rehabilitation (TR).

To ensure this journey is a successful one that leads to reductions in reoffending this report proposes 12 recommendations. They were formed off the back of a number of interviews with mentoring organisations, as well as many mentors and mentees themselves.

They are:
1. Establish a clearer definition of mentoring
2. Start mentoring in prison, not at the gate
3. Reform attitudes to in-prison mentoring
4. Recruit 15,000 mentors by 2020
5. Set up a new HM Inspectorate of Rehabilitation
6. Measure the results of mentoring
7. Provide adequate funding for mentoring
8. Match mentors to offenders
9. Establish Mentoring Centres
10. Professionally mentor women offenders
11. Develop a national mentoring model
12. Tackle the obstacles to meaningful mentoring