Resilience, desistance and delinquent career of adolescent offenders

This study examines resilience and desistance from delinquent behaviours and attempts to identify factors which predict persistent or increased or decreased delinquency between adolescence and early childhood. A sample of 363 young people was obtained from the population of five public institutions in 1987 and 1992. Their delinquent trajectories were described on the basis of legal records. These suggested that resilience is a rare phenomenon and is associated with stable relationships, absence of diagnostic label and good adaptation to the institution. Two axes were identified which can be used to describe the population, the family background and the psychological characteristics of the individual. Information which predicted desistance from a delinquent career was identified by means of a stepwise multiple regression. Analyses were conducted separately for each age group to take account of differences in time after the placement. The results indicated that there are important age-related differences in the characteristics which influence desistance or risk. They also show length of stay in an institution to be a predictor. Desistance from further delinquency seems to depend on the time spent in the residential environment associated with an increase of guilt, an improvement of self-image and of attachment to one or more other people.