Peer victimization, prison climate, resilience and psychological distress of incarcerated juvenile offenders in Ghana: A serial mediation examination

Abstract

A B S T R A C T Most Ghanaian research in the area of victimization among children has focused on the school setting. Little research has been done in an attempt to understand inmate-on-inmate victimization within the juvenile correctional facilities in Ghana. This study, therefore, investigated the extent to which peer victimization influences psychological distress among juvenile offenders in the Senior Correctional Center of Ghana. A crosssectional design was used to purposively sample 115 juvenile offenders for the study. Following mediation analysis performed in PROCESS, the results revealed that prison climate and resilience serially mediated the relationship between peer victimization and psychological distress. Independently, both prison climate and resilience mediated the relationship between peer victimization and psychological distress. It was recommended that anti-bullying programs ought to be institutionalized to create mental health awareness within the correctional facilities. Also, support systems such as the Listener Scheme need to be deployed within the correctional facilities.