Perspective Chapter: Resilience as a Process in Changing the Criminal Behavior of Young Offenders

1. Introduction

In order to describe and argue the role and place of resilience in the criminal justice system, we consider it useful to present the concept applicable to the field of human sciences and the controversies related to its definition, starting from the fact that this concept is ultimately a dynamic and interactive process between individual, family and social environment. The term resilience is widely developed and studied in the literature in different fields: psychology, social work, biology, etc.

Human resilience is defined by [1] as “the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances.” Caring and support is the key ingredient for resilience [1, 2]. A resilience-focused approach should identify the positive factors in children and adolescents’ lives that help them cope with the new developmental tasks required of them by society and face the adversities [3].

The authors [1] assert that children can be more or less resilient in different situations and at different points in their lives, depending on the interplay and aggregation of individual and environmental factors [4]. The same applies to youth in a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. The concept of resilience is used more often in specialty literature, although there is not yet a consensus among specialists with regard to its definition. Initially defined as the capacity of some individuals to cope in the presence of environmental stressors and to overcome difficulties associated with unfavorable conditions, it was assimilated to the concept of invulnerability, entailing strictly personal characteristics, physical and psychological, being connected rather to the definition of the origin of resilience, that applied in physics. Considering the fact that the individual’s interactions take place in a system of continuous change, resistance in front of stressors is rather due to environmental factors, which are variable in time and space, rather than to the personal characteristics of the individual, he himself being in a continuous process of change due to these interactions. Consequently, according to humanistic sciences, resilience is a developmental process, not an innate quality, but an acquired one [5].

Despite the absence of a unique and universally valid definition of resilience, there is still a consensus among specialists regarding two essential aspects related to this concept: the first aspect is formed around the idea that resilience is the result of an interactive process, part of which are the person, his family, and his surroundings; the second aspect refers to the fact that resilience characterizes a person that has gone through or is going through a traumatic event or chronic adversities, showing good adaptation, this suffering different meanings according to the persons age and sociocultural context [6].

The definition of resilience generates a series of connections with that provided by [7] (2014): “resilience refers to the ability of a dynamic system to successfully adapt to disruptions that threaten its viability, operation or development. For those interested in understanding the impact of major traumatic events […] these must be referred to in terms of multiple interaction of systems,” and that provided by [8]: “despite the absence of a single, universally accepted definition of resilience, there is actually an agreement on two main points: (a) resilience characterizes a person who has experienced or is experiencing a traumatic event or chronic adversity and shows a good adaptation (which has different meanings depending on age and social and cultural context) and (b) resilience is the result of an interactive process between the individual, his family and his environment.”

The author in [9] shows that resilience refers to the human capacity to face, integrate, and transform through adverse experiences or negative life events, without behavioral disturbances or major mental effects, in order to defend the quality of life, which also finds direct representation in the case of influences and trauma suffered by victims and offenders, generated by committing the offense and by coming into contact with the justice system.

The concept of resilience integrates four conditions mentioned in the specialty literature as being both necessary and sufficient in identifying a resilience process, this entailing identifying a trauma or the perception of failure; the activation of coping strategies; maintaining the developmental potential; the tendency toward fulfillment through originality [10].

An individual’s coping strategy can include multiple behaviors based on the knowledge the person has. Meanwhile, defensive mechanisms are built as a barrier between the individual’s vulnerability and external challenges. Coping strategies crystallize the individual’s ability to confront, mobilize, and control the situation. They are constructed and consciously planned by the person. Sometimes, they are considered as a positive variant of defense mechanisms, leading to a reasonable solution to situations of discomfort or suffering. In other words, in building resilience, the essential role is played by the individual’s potential and the individual resources that will be harnessed in this process, naturally or as a result of specific recovery interventions. Irresiliency, as a concept contrary to resilience, highlights the opposite face of individual potentialities, the constraints that it perceives and develops in its confrontation with the surrounding reality [11]. The traumatic effects that crime has on the young offender can have repercussions on his psychological development and, implicitly, on his emotional balance. In this case, the development of the individual can stop, maintain, respond (resume) negatively to external stimuli, i.e., the process by which the subject builds a neo-development, giving up or not any prospect of positive psychosocial progress—irresiliency (in French, original “desilience”) or resume a new anticipatory development—resilience (on French, original “resilience”) [12].

Having all these conceptual explanations in mind, this chapter provides some new perspectives about the process of resilience and insight into the criminal justice system in order to develop specialized programs and offer new approaches for traditional concepts about rehabilitation, reintegration, and resocialization.

2. Resilience in the criminal justice system

Criminal law has its finality through criminal sanctions, which are the consequences that the criminal law imposes for the breach of its precepts, in particular, coercive measures that are attracted by committing acts provided by the criminal law and also tools for achieving and restoring the rule of law. These are necessary in order to express the abstract gravity of the prohibited act and the intensity of the warning that the criminal law sends to its addresses. Out of the criminal sanctions, prison sentences are the most severe. In order to assess their psychological consequences, we take into consideration an important factor “time.” Time is an essential criterion for the systematization of human life. In relation to punishment or custodial time, the attitude toward time differs for each participant in the act of justice [13]. In respect of criminal law, time is only a level of the abstract social danger; during the trial, time becomes a reflection of the specific social danger of the crime committed by the individual, while, for the convicted person, time is perceived in a completely different way than the other participants in the act of justice. A person in detention is most often aware that he enters the prison against his will, with a long-term status of subordination, and feels the loss of freedom in a painful way to imprisonment being added to a number of other sufferings related to the living conditions in prison [14].

Unlike traditional criminal justice, at the law-psychology-psychiatry interface, the first and best-known element is therapeutic jurisprudence, a concept introduced in the late 1980s by David Wexler and Bruce Winick, who defined it as “the study of the effects of legislation and of the legal system on the behavior, emotions and mental health of individuals: in particular, a multidisciplinary examination of how law and mental health interact” [15].

In this context, in contrast to traditional criminal justice, which focuses on custodial, educational measures applied to young offenders, new models of preventing delinquent behavior have been developed, such as restorative justice or therapeutic justice.

One of the most comprehensive definitions of the concept of restorative justice, was provided by the authors in [16], and he shows that this form of justice is a response given to crime that provides opportunities for those who are affected by it, the victim, the offender, their families, and the community—to be directly involved in responding to the harm produced by the offense. Restorative justice is based on values that emphasize the importance of providing the possibility of more active involvement in the process of providing support and assistance to the victims of the offense, making offenders accountable toward the people and communities they have harmed, and restoring the victims’ emotional and material losses.

In its depth, restorative justice is a conversation, carefully facilitated, involving dialog between people whose relationship has been damaged or destroyed as a result of a crime. Recognizing the traumas caused by the crime, restorative justice pays special attention to all those who suffered, those who were injured, and the factors responsible for the criminal justice system and their communities [17].

Compared to the alternative forms of justice, restorative justice, and therapeutic justice, the redefinition of the concepts of social reintegration and rehabilitation of offenders leads us to use the developments from other branches of the social sciences, and our attention is directed toward the concept of resilience, as a result of an interactive process attended by the person, family and the environment in which the individual lives. In particular, we see a direct link between this concept and the interpersonal relationship between the offender and his life environment, seen as a change and reintegration agent, the agent that should be seen beyond the judicial decision. Committing an offense and the criminal sanction applied is a traumatic process, and overcoming it and returning to the community is, in the science of criminal law, what we call social rehabilitation and reintegration. This recuperative process depends on a number of objective and subjective factors, namely risk and protective factors, that are specific to both the adaptation to the prison and the possibilities of adaptation/readaptation to the social environment [13].

The main elements that characterize restorative justice refer to voluntary commitment and telling the truth face to face. Thus, the entire process must be entirely voluntary for all participants, and offenders must take responsibility for the harm done through the offense.

Starting from the assumption stated by [18] for the fundamental paradigm of restorative justice, in which he stated that the offense is a violation of people and of the relationships between them rather than a violation of law, Latimer, with Dowden and Muise realized a meta-analysis on restorative justice programs, analyzed in comparison with those having non-restorative approaches. Their study was focused on four important results: recidivism, victim satisfaction, offender satisfaction, and compliance with giving back.

The findings of the study highlighted the increased efficiency of restorative justice programs in relation to others and their best success in achieving the four goals that were the subject of their research [19].

In the same register of the forms of justice, an alternative to the classic one, therapeutic jurisprudence and justice represents, essentially, selecting the most effective options that promote health and are in direct correlation with the legal system values.

Small describes therapeutic jurisprudence based on the results of [20] David Wexler, who shows that the study of mental health would serve society better if it used the law as a therapeutic agent. Wexler divided therapeutic jurisprudence into four areas: the role that law has in producing psychological disruptions, therapeutic aspects of the law, the therapeutic aspects of the legal system, and the therapeutic aspects of the legal and judicial roles. He shows that each of them can take effect and have therapeutic and anti-therapeutic results, both or none.

Based on the potential that therapeutic jurisprudence has, [21] points out that researchers are not aware of it. In addition, the fact that Wexler is centered in the case of therapeutic jurisprudence only on laws governing mental health, Small shows that in the jurisprudential context, the law can be used as a behavioral tool in a much broader sense [21].

The most important similarity between therapeutic and restorative justice is the empathy toward the two protagonists of the offense, the victim and offender, which is oriented toward the consequences that affect them: loss, grief, emotions, and damage to relationships. While therapeutic justice is mainly the lens focused on these issues, restorative justice involves concrete commitments for the accountability of offenders and compensation for the damages suffered by the victim.

Therapeutic jurisprudence (therapeutic justice) shows, ultimately, the enormous impact that the justice system has on the physical and psychological well-being of people. Understanding this key issue is largely what motivates restorative justice. Both forms of justice are interested in how the behavioral issues of the offender can be overcome, minimizing as much as possible the suffering of the victim, so that both benefit from recovery and it can prevent their further victimization [22].

Therapeutic and restorative justice, gradually became popular alternative forms that were appreciated as responsive to the real role of justice and brought concrete elements leading to its implementation and to the increase of its efficiency.

In order to demonstrate the need for analyzing the relationship and linkages between resilience and law and to identify the potential roles that resilience may have within the criminal law system and the place where it finds applicability in the criminal justice system, we begin from the fact that criminal law meets its purpose through criminal law sanctions. These are the consequences that criminal law imposes for the breach of its precepts, namely the coercive measures that stem from committing acts under criminal law and also tools for developing and restoring the rule of law. Criminal law sanctions are necessary in order to express the abstract severity of the prohibited act and the intensity of the warning that criminal law sends out to its addressees [23].

The psychological problems of the victim and of the offender are prerequisites for the closeness between law and the concept of “resilience.” It refers, on the one hand, to the effects of the victim’s trauma and, on the other, to the effects of the criminal sanction—particularly of arrest and detention—on the offender. These problems are obviously of concern to psychology and psychiatry, disciplines that began to study them [14].

Psychologically, for teenagers, the custodial measures determine a series of changes, the most intense being registered in the area of affection. When this measure is perceived as fitting the crime, the teenager will accept the rigors of custodial life. However, when the penal sanction applied is considered to be harsher than the act committed, the teenager views this as an injustice and feels that he is serving an undeserved sentence. Imprisonment, in general, implies many forms, and from a qualitative viewpoint, it creates a special phenomenon, namely incarceration shock. This causes a complex range of psychological and psychosocial turmoil, starting with the detention crisis manifested due to them entering the shell of silence and ranging to aggressive and self-aggressive behaviors (suicide, self-flagellation). The shock of incarceration is also manifested through the restriction of individual freedom. With imprisonment, the person is cast into a new life, a life limited by several barriers, although the care aimed at ensuring a normal life cannot remove the effects of his loss of freedom: the incarcerated individual leads a chaotic life, thus suffering a dramatic shock. This social system, in the custodial facilities, is a closed environment that requires a series of adaptations and causes behavioral changes, adopting new attitudes and values, with effects on the personality of each teenager.

In conclusion, we can show that in relation to the alternative forms of justice, restorative justice, and therapeutic justice, it was redefining the concepts of rehabilitation and social reintegration of offenders. Both forms, together with traditional criminal justice, lead us to use developments from other branches of social sciences, and our attention is directed to the concept of resilience, viewed as a result of an interactive process involving the person, his family, and the environment in which the individual lives. We especially notice this concept’s direct link with the interpersonal relationship between the offender and his living environment as a support for change and reintegration, support that must be regarded beyond the judicial decision. Committing an offense and the criminal sanction applied represent a traumatic process for the offender, especially for young people. In the science of criminal law, overcoming this trauma and returning to the community is exactly what we call social rehabilitation and social reintegration. This recuperative process depends on a number of objective and subjective factors, respectively, risk and protective factors that are specific to both the adaptation to the custodial environment and the possibilities of adaptation/readaptation to the social environment. From this perspective, the intervention is specific to psychological resilience; however, the leverages to achieving it are specific to the criminal justice system, both in the legal regulation framework and the institutional one, through which justice is carried out.

In order to analyze the possible connections between resilience and the science of law [15], the originators of the concept of juridical resilience have shown that it is based on a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or even transdisciplinary approach starting precisely at the law-psychology-psychiatry interface that revolves around therapeutic jurisprudence. Thus, in a first acceptance, they showed that, as an application of the concept of resilience in law, juridical resilience brings together the efforts of specialists in the field of sciences dealing with the human mind and those dealing with the law (theoreticians and practitioners alike), including that of victimology, in order to study in a multidisciplinary manner how legislation and restorative justice on the one hand, and resilience (especially assisted resilience) on the other, can interact to ensure the necessary framework for supporting victims and offenders to free themselves from their status and to fully express the desire to grow again, to recreate themselves in a healthy manner, using their own way of perfection. “This type of resilience is specialized for the field that fuels it, namely for the science of criminal law and is a complex process that ultimately entails an integrative approach of crime on all levels on which it takes effect” [15]. The crime-victim-offender triad brings a series of challenges to research, challenges designed, on the one hand, to analyze the causes and factors that have brought about the criminal act and, on the other hand, to identify recuperative solutions for the two protagonists of the criminal act, namely the victim and the offender. If for the victim, the study of resilience can be analyzed based on the principles of victimology and restorative justice, from the offender’s perspective, it is based on the results recognized in the areas of activity belonging to disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, criminology, sociology, social work and others and, not least, to the science of criminal law.

An important perspective for juridical resilience entails the “capacity of the juridical system, as well as the interventions of the social actors throughout the entire duration of criminal proceedings (criminal prosecution, trial, execution of criminal sanctions), to restore the rule of law infringed and, especially, to treat the main protagonists, so that they can return to their original condition, also emotionally” [24].

The premises of the proximity between resilience and justice are linked to the psychological problems of both the victim and the offender, traditionally dealt with by the psychologist and psychiatrist. These problems are largely of interest to psychological resilience. In the context of criminal justice, the psychological problems of the victim and of the offender can only be solved with its support, and to this end, we highlight two important insights: (1) the contribution of justice to solving the psychological problems of the victim and of the offender, through the new forms of justice presented in the previous chapter and (2) the contribution of justice to the process of rehabilitation/social readaptation of offenders, where the indicator for rehabilitation is the relapse rate.

3. The resilience process: risk and protective factors for young offenders

Most juvenile offenders from around the world come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Poverty, unemployment, lack of housing, broken families, history of psychological problems and mental illness, substance abuse and alcohol abuse, and domestic violence are realities that are found in most of them.

The problem of juvenile delinquency is a field with profound implications for decision-makers involved in the development of criminal and social reintegration policies. The psychosocial characteristics specific to the age stage, the impact of new information technologies, and globalization have a significant influence on the current generations of adolescents, minimizing the educational and cultural patterns traditionally established. Juvenile delinquency, as a deviant phenomenon, is a reality for all societies regardless of time markers; however, the ways to treat and intervene on issues related to it have evolved significantly in recent decades. Through the range of support services provided to minors, the criminal justice system must shape their personality and their behavior and record the results expected by society on the same terms as, obviously, school, family, the media, and society as a whole, have failed before.

By using custodial, educational measures as a response to all juvenile crime, not only is the problem of community safety not addressed in a sustainable way, but the cycle of poverty, weakened employability, deteriorating relationships, worsening mental illness, and continued or increased drug use can be perpetuated.

Studies show that trying to overcome the harmful effects of overcrowding by building new facilities does not offer a sustainable solution. Many international mechanisms recommend a rationalization of sentencing policy, including the wider use of alternative measures to custodial measures, seeking to reduce the number of people isolated from society for long periods of time. Youth in custody in the juvenile justice system are disproportionately exposed to subsequent experiences, which are known to increase the risk of physical violence, delinquency, and self-destructive behavior. Such experiences include parental incarceration, violent victimization and exposure to violence, poverty, and family breakdown. All of these experiences can be seen as childhood traumas whose proximal outcomes include increased risk for substance use disorders, conduct disorders, delinquency, violent behavior, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts. The types of traumatic events understood as possible generators of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) include violent attacks, terrorist attacks, torture, kidnapping and hostage-taking, incarceration as a prisoner, etc. [25].

The statistics show that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is higher among populations of offenders than in the general population. A number of risk factors that are common among people involved in criminal activities, such as minority status, childhood abuse and neglect, poverty, and addictive behavior, can be attributed to this [26].

In the case of victimology, as in that of resilience, there is no universally accepted definition. Among the many definitions of the concept of victimology, we can show one example that, through its contents, offers a link with a series of consecrated definitions of psychological resilience.

Although the literature has begun to focus attention on the need for clinical practices and treatments for youth trauma involved in juvenile justice, current developments are still weak. Knowledge of this pathway could support juvenile justice policy and intervention practices, which in turn could help ameliorate the impact of childhood trauma on youth development. It could also serve the objectives of the juvenile justice system. We believe this can be represented by restorative interventions based on building resilience by enhancing protective factors at the expense of risk factors. Protective factors are considered risk moderators. According to [27], protective factors allow to reduce the effect of a risk situation and, thus, to avoid negative repercussions of risk on the individual. Like vulnerability factors, protective factors have different natures, mainly individual and environmental [8].

With regards to risk factors for juveniles, the person who struggles with long-term and chronic adversities such as high impulsivity, lack of social skills, inadequate parental supervision, and poor school performance is more likely to commit criminal acts and remain involved in criminal behavior [28].

From the analysis of risk and protective factors associated with delinquent behavior, several significant elements emerge [29]:

• A single risk factor does not lead a person to delinquent behavior;

• Risk factors do not act in isolation but are usually cumulative: the more risk factors young people are exposed to, the greater the likelihood of negative outcomes, including delinquency;

• When the risk factors to which a young person is exposed involve more perspectives, the likelihood of delinquency increases to a greater extent;

• Different risk factors are likely to influence young people at different periods of their development. For example, peer group risk factors are usually encountered later in a young person’s development than individual and family factors;

• Because risk and protective factors are dynamic, service providers should conduct ongoing assessments of these conditions.

Although young people face a range of risk factors, it is important to stress that all individuals have strengths and are capable of being resilient. Thus, all children and families have individual strengths that can be identified, built upon, and engaged to prevent future delinquent behavior and involvement in the criminal justice system. In recent years, studies on juvenile delinquency and the juvenile criminal justice system have increasingly examined the impact of these strengths (protective factors) on young people’s ability to overcome challenges and develop harmoniously. The individualization of the recuperative interventions, of the programs and activities in which the minors and the young people are involved, is realized according to the characteristics of each of them, for a balanced physical and psychosocial development [30].

Promoting resilience is essential for children and young people who have experienced early adversity, including abuse and neglect. To develop effective interventions, a longitudinal approach is needed that can identify factors that promote resilience in high-risk environments. Most research on resilience and childhood adversity has been cross-sectional and characterized by very different approaches to defining and measuring resilience [31].

Resilience, as a result of interactions between the delinquent youth family and the social environment (custodial or non-custodial), enhances the experiences generated by distress, limits or avoids stigma, and improves family relationships where appropriate or possible.

4. Natural resilience versus assisted resilience

In approaching resilience from the perspective of the relationship between the criminal justice system and the behavioral sciences, a significant importance is that of the social context or social capital. This translates into support groups that can be made up of friends, schoolmates, and staff from criminal justice institutions that help to create a friendly, welcoming, and even safe climate.

From the perspective of the young offender, under custodial measures, an important role is highlighted by individual risk and protective factors. These shape the young offender’s capacity to adapt and overcome adversity and define what is known as natural resilience. On the other hand, the building of resilience that requires specialist intervention is known as assisted resilience. These specialists will draw on the full range of resources, individual, family, and environmental, to identify the intervention programs required for the young offender. Assisted resilience can use different methods based on a series of maieutic type strategies that aim to replace the “often directive, intrusive, constraining character of classical interventions with a genuine accompaniment that, by facilitating the updating and use of the person’s competences, helps him/her to cope with adversity or trauma and builds resilience” [32].

Specialists who can ensure the implementation of assisted resilience programs are called resilience mentors or tutors, as [5] Boris Cyrulnik called them in 2001.

The role of these specialists is to identify and assess the resources of the young offender and to integrate them into specific intervention programs, so that the young person can be guided toward accessing them as effectively as possible. The level of training, competences, and skills of resilience mentors depends to a large extent on the success of the individualized implementation of such programs.

“Three steps must be taken in the use of resilience-assisted intervention methods:

• The intervention should not be focused only on the individual, as resilience is the product of interactions; it is therefore necessary to involve the family and the subject’s environment;

• Not to easily overlook suffering, focusing the intervention on the person’s competences and strengths;

• Not to stigmatize the “at risk” persons by applying targeted interventions” [8].

We appreciate that the resilience thus built, natural or assisted, influences the legal factor that has a determining role in the resocialization and reintegration of the young offender.

5. Rehabilitation, resocialization, and reintegration of young offender’s through the resilience process

The social and psychological profile of most part of our target population shows, empirically observing, that many of these adolescents present at least one risk factor, but usually far more, for the patterns of aggression and violence. If we follow the list of common risk factors for childhood and adolescent problems by the level of influence presented by [33], we can identify, in the life history of these adolescents, almost all of these risk factors.

They often face difficult environmental factors: their neighborhood usually promotes informal laws and norms favorable to antisocial behavior; their family socioeconomic status is often defined by poverty and economic deprivation, with a low level of education and low economic opportunity. The youth delinquent also faces interpersonal and social risk factors. In their family profile, we can discover different traits often considered as responsible for chronic patterns of antisocial behavior [34]. They frequently have a background of difficult families, dominated by poor communication, disorganization and conflict, and poor parent-child bonding (e.g., the family could break the direct or indirect liaisons with the delinquent adolescent right after his entry into one custodial facility and all over the period of re-education), ineffective parental discipline, lack of parental involvement, parental criminality, family alcohol and drug use, child abuse and/or neglect, and rejection. Farrington and West [35] identified poor parental child-rearing behavior as among the most important independent predictors of juvenile delinquency [36]. Leone et al. [37] states that paternal characteristics and family criminality could account for a higher percentage of variance in delinquent behavior.

Their social situation also includes, for most of them, low commitment to school, frequent academic and social failure, lack of follow-through in rules, poor and/or inconsistent administrative support, rejection by conforming peer groups, and association with antisocial peers.

In their cases, individual risk factors often include sensation seek-orientation, poor impulse control, attention deficits, hyperactivity, risk-taking, poor social skills, instability and rage, and certain beliefs and attitudes (e.g., the necessity of retaliation). They frequently expose certain disabilities, such as emotional disturbance, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorders, and specific learning disabilities, usually presented in the psychological literature as risk factors for stable aggressive and violent behaviors [36].

This profile may lead to a certain type of manifestations, such as post-traumatic stress disorders, or a variety of psychopathological manifestations, among which are depression, alcoholism, generally addictive behaviors, and permanent sadness [37].

Very often, they experienced inadequate and punitive reactions in schools and communities in response to their aggressive and violent behaviors, such as corporal punishment, suspension, expulsion, and incarceration. These approaches of zero tolerance are, in most cases, inefficient, leading to increasing aggression and violence [38].

Looking from the perspective of building the resilience of young offenders, all the aspects specified above, related to the profile of the young offender, the causes that led to the commission of crimes, with or without violence, as well as the high rate of recidivism, lead us to reconsider the different valuation of restorative intervention programs.

Modern institutional practices that are oriented toward rehabilitative interventions that focus on the positive potentials and resources of the young offender, as we have shown above, resilience-assisted interventions, have generated a number of new approaches to the rehabilitation, reintegration, and resocialization of young offenders, opening new perspectives for intervention programs and educational projects.

In behavioral terms, rehabilitation means a “change in the way a person behaves” [10], so it directly involves prosocial, law-abiding behavior.

Behaviors in relations with others become more appropriate, and the person gains experience, which they process, becoming knowledgeable with application values and, at the same time, with values of internal restructuring, external reorientation in the environment, and repositioning in one’s own life. This cognitive processing of complex experiences leads to increased empathy of the individual. Empathy acts as a quality bond in relationships with others [29]. All this in turn increases the likelihood of resilience in a future confrontation with risk or adversity and in our opinion, can contribute to reducing the risk of reoffending and recidivism.

6. Conclusions

The task of identifying variables that can protect adolescents from offending when they have already initiated this type of behavior is complex. In order to do this, it is necessary to examine the interactions between the factors that place these adolescents at risk of further antisocial, even violent, behavior and those factors that may lead to a decrease in this type of behavior. The existence of a multitude of potential risk and protective factors complicates the ability to identify factors that have a statistically significant protective effect that can be used in programs offered by educational centers in the hope of inhibiting antisocial behavior [39].

Protective factors, which play an essential role in building resilience, are typically defined as social and personal resources that encourage prosocial adaptation to criminogenic conditions. Resilience is not only the result of interventions or refraining from further offending. Rather, within the criminal justice system, it involves the ability of those in high-risk social and personal situations to resist the criminogenic conditions that lead many others to re-offend. Those high-risk young people who are able to refrain from returning to offending behavior are considered to be “resilient.” In turn, a key issue is what differentiates resilient from non-resilient young people. One explanation is that resilience is made possible by the presence of “protective factors” that insulate people from the risks they face every day. In supported resilience programs, young people can acquire a different way of thinking and behave, i.e., they can benefit from real prosocial modeling. This modeling can be done with the help of resilience mentors to facilitate the learning of prosocial behavior and facilitate the resilience process. The institutional context and the professionalism of resilient mentors are essential elements to achieve this goal.

The mentors/tutors of resilience can play an important help to stimulate the natural resilience of young offenders and actively participate to build their resilience through the assisted resilience as it was presented above.

In order to make the activity of resilience mentors more efficient, it is recommended to ensure that they work in good and positive organizational management, which encourages training courses or exchanges of experience and best practices. An important role is attributed to partnerships with universities in order to develop postgraduate specializations focused on these categories of beneficiaries. In this context, we believe that the necessary framework is created for new research opportunities on risk and protective factors affecting victims, offenders, professionals, and the community, which do not overly polarize aspects of vulnerability but, instead, harness their adaptive potential and resources. Finally, our approach is not strictly theoretical but applied so that an interdisciplinary approach provides new values and solutions to make the criminal justice process more efficient through the support of resilience tutors/mentors. In all presented above, drawing on definitions of resilience insight into the criminal justice system, this chapter explores the relationship between risk and protective factors that lead to delinquent behavior and how resilience mentors support the development of young offenders’ resilience.

Acknowledgments

The authors are sincerely grateful to Prof. Serban Ionescu and Prof. Ovidiu Predescu for the constant support and collaboration they have offered us in the last 10 years in the development of new concepts specific to the criminal justice system.

This manuscript was supported from West University of Timisoara funds.

Conflict of interest

“The authors declare no conflict of interest.”