Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Anger: Resources and Risk Factors for Italian Prison Inmates

• Author: Francesca Danioni,Francesca Giorgia Paleari,Sara Pelucchi,Maria Rita Lombrano,Daniel Lumera,Camillo Regalia
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X211049191
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X211049191

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2023, Vol. 67(2-3) 207 –223

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X211049191

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Article

Gratitude, Forgiveness, and

Anger: Resources and Risk

Factors for Italian Prison

Inmates

Francesca Danioni1, Francesca Giorgia Paleari2,

Sara Pelucchi1, Maria Rita Lombrano3, Daniel Lumera3,

and Camillo Regalia1

Abstract

The adjustment of prison inmates is recently becoming a social concern. In the current

study we focused on the role of gratitude, interpersonal forgiveness, and anger,

which have been widely addressed as likely to influence people’s health and adaptive

behaviors, in shaping prison inmates’ psychological wellbeing and criminal attitudes.

Participants were 104 male prison inmates aged between 24 and 75 (Mage = 46.63,

SD = 11.38) imprisoned in Northern Italy who were asked to fill in an anonymous

self-report questionnaire. Results highlighted that all dimensions considered play an

important, albeit different and highly specific, role; Gratitude is a promotional factor

that enhances psychological wellbeing, whereas interpersonal forgiveness appears

to be a protective factor against the adoption of a criminal attitude as violence or

antisocial intent. Finally, anger is a risk factor toward both psychological wellbeing

and violent behaviors. Implications of these results and further developments of the

study are discussed.

Keywords

gratitude, anger, interpersonal forgiveness, prison inmates, wellbeing, criminal

attitudes

1Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy

2University of Bergamo, Italy

3My Life Design ONLUS, Milano, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Francesca Danioni, Family Studies and Research University Centre, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore,

Largo Gemelli, 1, Milano 20123, Italy.

Email: francescavittoria.danioni@unicatt.it

1049191IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X211049191International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyDanioni et al.

research-article2021

208 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 67(2-3)

Introduction

According to the Italian Justice Department, in Italy there currently are over 53,000

prisoners (Ministero della Giustizia, 2021). The mental health of prison inmates is

recently becoming a social concern and public issue that needs to be faced. Indeed,

recent literature on this topic has shown how prisoners overall report low levels of

general psychological wellbeing (Fazel & Seewald, 2012). According to a systematic

review carried out on a sample of 23,000 prison inmates, there are high rates of psy-

chiatric morbidity among prisoners, whereas 11.4% are affected by major depression

(Fazel & Seewald, 2012). Results from a cross-sectional study carried out in Italy

among 990 prisoners showed a similar pattern of results; Indeed, 19.3% of respon-

dents had one or more current mental disorder (Carrà et al., 2004). More interestingly,

Macciò et al. (2015) compared a group of 300 detainees held in an Italian prison with

a similar group of controls and found that the former presented a significantly higher

prevalence of psychiatric and stress-related disorders if compared to the latter.

Beside this, prison inmates may also show high levels of aggression (e.g., Cima

et al., 2008; Falk et al., 2017). More specifically, criminal attitudes and antisocial

intents of prison inmates have shown to be related to a greater risk of recidivism (Mills

et al., 2004). Despite some sociodemographic variables as prisoners’ age and gender

have been found to be directly related to their violent recidivism (Piquero et al., 2015),

a recent study carried out on a sample of adult offenders interestingly highlighted how

their reported maladaptive emotion regulation was likely to be positively associated

with histories of aggression (Roberton et al., 2014). According to a study carried out

on 635 adult Spanish offenders, the inmates’ criminal history and antisocial pattern

were predictive of violent recidivism (Nguyen et al., 2011).

Based on all the above considerations, it becomes of crucial importance to find

possible risk factors and useful resources for prison inmates to face the challenges

for psychological wellbeing and the risk for adoption of violent and/or antisocial

behaviors which are in turn likely to cause recidivism. We aimed therefore at inte-

grating the theoretical framework of traditional criminology, mainly focused on

those factors which lead to deviant behaviors, with a new conceptual perspective of

criminology, namely positive criminology (Ronel & Elisha, 2011, 2020), where the

focus is instead on positive experience and on factors which distance from deviance

and crime. Indeed, positive criminology may provide a spiritual horizon that allows

people to reduce self-centeredness in order to find a higher meaning in daily life

(Ronel & Segev, 2014).

Past research has found that positive psychological constructs are positively related

to inmates’ mental health (e.g., Randall & Bishop, 2013; Wong et al., 2017).

Accordingly, in the current study we focused on the role of trait gratitude and trait

forgiveness, which have been widely addressed as positive psychological constructs

likely to influence people’s health and adaptive behaviors, in shaping prison inmates’

psychological wellbeing and criminal attitudes. However, also negative psychological

constructs are likely to contribute to explain these outcomes; among others, we spe-

cifically focused on trait anger.