A psychometric study of resilience and custodial adjustment among young people in custody

This thesis explores the impact of resilience upon adjustment to custody and emotional well-being among incarcerated adolescent males in the United Kingdom. First, the identification and factorial validation of the Resilience Scale for Children and Adolescents (RSCA; Prince-Embury, 2006, 2007) was completed as a measure of resilience among incarcerated young males. This suggested that young males in custody had below average levels of resilience. Resilience was found to be associated with positive self-perceptions, positive attitudes towards staff members, along with higher levels of good adjustment, positive behaviour and compliance with rules, fitting with a strength-based approach to treatment planning with offenders. Resilience was also found to be associated with lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger, emotional distress and poor adjustment. Evidence emerged to support compensatory models of resilience, where resilience improved the prediction of emotional well-being beyond that predicted by custodial adjustment. Young people identified as vulnerable by prison staff were found to have significantly lower levels of resilience, although naturally occurring clusters of young people based on their resilience profiles did not emerge when model-based clustering methods were used. As a result, a Composite Measure of Resilience and Vulnerability (CM-RV) was developed that could be utilised in practice to assess markers of resilience and vulnerability among young people in custody. The CM-RV is shown to predict a number of indicators of resilience and vulnerability within custody and concurrent validation of the measure was demonstrated. The results of this thesis have a number of implications for practice. In particular, the importance of young people’s relatedness to others is highlighted throughout. Despite the inherent challenges of promoting relatedness within the prison environment, the significant role that it appears to play in helping young people to successfully adjust to the custodial environment suggests that due consideration needs to be given to both its assessment and promotion. The results would also support the design and implementation of resilience promoting interventions to help assist young people to adjust and engage positively during their time in custody.