The intangible benefits of criminal mentorship

Frédéric Ouellet, Martin Bouchard and Valérie Thomas

Global Crime, 2022, vol. 23, issue 2, 240-258

Abstract: Individuals who report having had a mentor also tend to report higher levels of criminal achievement. However, prior studies focused on indirect yet tangible outcomes of mentorship, telling us little about the direct – though potentially intangible – benefits of these relationships to the mentee. In this study, we analyse the content of 28 life story narratives of offenders to examine the effects of mentor-mentee relationships. Half of the participants reported having had a mentor, but many did not meet our definition of mentorship that emphasised direct support in the context of criminal activities. Instead, participants described many intangible benefits of mentorship that we classified in two general categories: benefits to one’s criminal capital (high-level career advice, practical skills), and benefits to one’s social capital, in the form of either criminal partnership, an enhancement to one’s reputation or protection, or providing mentees with the independence necessary to succeed on their own.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17440572.2022.2068525 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fglcxx:v:23:y:2022:i:2:p:240-258

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FGLC20

DOI: 10.1080/17440572.2022.2068525

Access Statistics for this article

Global Crime is currently edited by Carlo Morselli

More articles in Global Crime from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().