Emotional intelligence in young people who offend

Emotional intelligence (EI) is an important part of psychological and social development. Low levels of EI have been linked with poor outcomes, but although some of these are also linked with risk of offending, EI has never been a factor taken on board by YOTs working with young people who offend. In order to ascertain whether it might be beneficial for young people in their desistance journey to work on emotional intelligence as an ability, links between this and their offending needed to be established. This research project investigated whether any associations could be found between EI and offending, and possible co-morbidity with other risk factors for offending.