Bonding With Non-Parental Others During Juvenile Incarceration: Communication Skills, Bonding Capability, and Recidivism

Abstract

This study went beyond the parent-child relationship and estimated justice-involved youths’ social bonds with mentors, teachers, facility staff, and peers during incarceration. Furthermore, rather than testing the widely found link between social bonds and recidivism, the study examined the factors that enabled youths to develop bonds during incarceration. Based on four waves of data of confined youth, the author used structural equation modeling and bootstrapping to examine how communication skills enabled the cultivation of social bonds and thus indirectly inhibited recidivism. Findings revealed that better communication skills were associated with a lower likelihood of recidivism. This crime-inhibitory effect was completely mediated by the prosocial bonds youths developed during incarceration. This study added to the literature by identifying the factors that explained one’s capacity to build social bonds. Implications for intervention programming were also discussed.