Get out of jail cards

Mind Moves:I am teaching a mindfulness-based course to a group of people recovering from severe addictions, in a drug project in Dublin's north inner city. Within this group are a number of young men with histories of criminal behaviour and imprisonment. Early in their adolescence, they chose to engage in various forms of anti-social behaviour to support their addictions and earned for themselves the label "juvenile offender".

In the view of most people such individuals are the scourge of our society - a waste of space - who deserve whatever punishments and detentions we can arrange for them. The very term "juvenile offender" can arouse strong emotion and prejudice, particularly if you've been the victim of a crime that left you shaken.

Working with this group, however, has been a very engaging and inspiring experience - one that has challenged me to put aside my stereotypes and middle class self-righteousness, and to see life through their eyes.

The typical "offender" is born into a large family, where there is grinding poverty which most of us will never know and only read about. Many have parents who are so in need themselves - barely coping with their own untreated psychological wounds and addictions - that they find their offspring exhausting and draining and are unable to meet their needs.

Community life holds few supports or healthy role models for the future offender. They are exposed to crime and detention on a daily basis.

On the outside these youths can push bravado to new limits to gain acceptance and status among their peers. Inside their heads the story is a very different one. We might assume that they feel pretty numb emotionally but while this is partly true, it isn't the whole story.

A very telling piece of research, completed recently by Jennifer Hayes in UCD, reveals much more clearly what it's like to live inside the skin of a juvenile offender. Hayes assessed in some depth the psychological world of 30 juvenile offenders (with a mean age of 14.9 years) who had been detained in detention schools for, on average, 314.5 days. Each of these young boys had an average of 11 charges against them.

To give herself some kind of benchmark against which to assess her psychological profile of these young offenders, Hayes also assessed a group of similarly aged boys, referred to a community mental health clinic (mean age of 14.6 years).

What she found was that, on average, each adolescent offender met criteria for 3.1 psychological disorders, whereas, the average rate of disorder in the mental health group was 1.3. Disorders within the offender group included separation anxiety, major depression, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, conduct disorder and substance abuse.

When you compare her finding that 82 per cent of these boys were experiencing a major psychological disorder - for which none of them was receiving any formal treatment - with the known incidence of 16.5 per cent of adolescents who experience psychological disorders annually in the general adolescent population, her findings are a cause for concern.

In effect, what she found was that young people in detention experience three times as many psychological disorders as those attending community mental health services, and that this incidence is five times greater than that in the general population.

In addition, she found two-thirds of young offenders had substance abuse problems, with histories that began as early back as mid-childhood. Cannabis abuse in her sample began at ages nine or 10 and cocaine abuse at ages 13 or 14.

A unique feature of Hayes's research was that she examined the "emotional intelligence" (EI) of this offender group, ie their ability to perceive their own emotions and that of others, to deal with emotions and use them skilfully to inform their thinking and problem solving.

While these boys had well-developed survival skills for coping with their own environments, there were striking deficits in their abilities to relate to others and cope in the broader world outside their immediate communities.

Hayes proposed that these were fundamental EI skills that should be taught to this group, and that detention itself offered a critical learning opportunity that should be maximised.

Overall, her research suggested that we should cut these individuals a much better deal: we need to extend to them their basic human right to psychological care and the chance to learn key life skills so that they can map a different life course for themselves, other than repeated detention.

When we think about offenders, it is easy to focus on the wrong they have done to us. Perhaps it is time to reflect on the wrong we do these children - let's remember they are children - by not offering them some meaningful "get out of jail" card.

A conference in O'Reilly Hall, UCD on May 18th - Emotional intelligence, mental health and juvenile delinquency - will explore the above research and consider what kinds of programmes could be introduced. E-mail Gary O'Reilly at: gary.e.oreilly@ucd.ie.

Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health.