Instruments that assess recidivism risk in young people are used widely in the sphere of juvenile justice worldwide. Traditionally, research has focused on the study of risk factors presented by young offenders, and how these relate to criminal recidivism. In present-day research, protective factors have also come into their own, having proven to encourage non-recidivism in young offenders. This paper presents a study carried out with 594 young offenders. The instrument used for assessing risk of recidivism in young offenders was the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY). In the results found here, one can observe how the young offenders who did not reoffend presented a greater level of protective factors than the repeating offenders. The youths with a prior arrest record scored higher in the risk domains than the reoffenders without a prior arrest record. The case of young repeat offenders who already had an arrest record represents a high-risk profile, or a profile of a criminal career. Crimes committed by young people can be isolated incidents in their life. In most youths, criminal behavior does not persist beyond legal age. Protective factors prove to be important in juvenile justice when planning an individualized intervention for the young offender.

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Impaired emotional capacity in antisocial populations is a well-known reality. Taking the dimensional approach to the study of emotion, emotions are perceived as a disposition to action; they emerge from arousal of the appetitive or aversive system, and result in subjective, behavioral, and physiological responses that are modulated by the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance. This study uses the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) to study the interaction between the type of picture presented (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant) and group (adolescents under custody in juvenile justice centers, adolescents under non-custodial measures, and secondary school students) in the emotional assessment of these dimensions. The interaction between the study variables was statistically significant. Statistically significant differences were found between the three types of pictures presented, in the ratings of unpleasant pictures between the custody group and the group of secondary students in regular schooling in valence, and in the ratings of unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant pictures in arousal, between the custody group and all groups. Discriminant analyses of each affective dimension indicate that the unpleasant pictures with violent and/or aggressive content tend to be in the functions that most differentiate the antisocial groups.