The Life Marking Experience of Passing Through a Juvenile Offender’s Home During Adolescence: A Recount

participants’ considered most relevant in their lives, using as a reference axis the

period of their adolescence. The analysis of the data was made by means of a Weighed Hierarchic Content Analysis technique; and its validation, was obtained through the techniques of Triangulation and Counterchecking. The emergent pattern of results from these analyses showed that their passage through the COD was a keynote fact in their lives, because they divided their life experiences in a “before”, “during” and “after”, their being there; being of paramount importance at each of these three periods, the bonds they established, first with the family, second with the friends and “uncles” at the institution, and third with their own family, pairs and friends. These are the relationships the participants refer to as triggering factors for initiating and/or maintaining their later adaptive or maladaptive behaviour. The depth of the obtained understanding allows us to sustain the hypothesis that a damaged or interfered affective bond during the adolescent period, can possibly become consolidated as an alteration of bonding embedded in “criminal identity”, if the youngster does not reach “reparation” by means of the support of socially adapted surrogate significant others.