ABSTRACT
Bullying appears to be an ingrained and salient aspect of the experience of being an incarcerated youth. This type of behaviour has long been recognized as a source of power struggles and distress within penal establishments. For example, as has already been covered in the chapter by Eric Blaauw (Chapter 3, this volume), suicides and suicidal behaviour among prisoners have been linked to the experience of being bullied. Indeed, investigation of the suicides of four young offenders in one single institution alone between 1991 and 1992 implicated bullying as a contributory factor (Marshall 1993). More recently, researchers have been actively exploring the association between psychological distress and bullying among young offenders (e.g. Hafiz and Ireland in press; Ireland 2005), reporting victims of bullying are at an increased risk of reporting a range of psychological health difficulties including anxiety and severe depression, justifying further the need to explore bullying among such offenders.
