Friends as Social Capital: A Preliminary Analysis of Previous Experience with – and Current Willingness to Befriend – Offenders in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Offenders who return to the community need social support to prevent recidivism, which has been challenging, necessitating a formal program (i.e., befrienders programs) where volunteers “befriend” these offenders as a way to provide social capital. However, the challenge to the recruitment to these programs is the question if just anyone could be a befriender for these offenders. This study explores the willingness of individuals to befriend an offender, along with their previous experience of exposure to a friend with a criminal background, which will provide insights for the recruitment purpose. This mixed-design study explored if 180 university students had a friend with an offender-status and their willingness to befriend other offenders along with their explanation. Chi-square tests of independence showed that having a friend with an offender-status has a relationship with the participants’ willingness to befriend other offenders, while there is no gender difference in their willingness. Content analysis showed various motivations for willingness that point to the general aspect of humanity and empathy of the participants, although prior contacts with an offender may impact getting to know other offenders. The study argues that recruitment process for the befriending program can be done through assessing prior contact with an offender.

KEYWORDS:

• Befriending
• offenders
• social capital
• volunteerism

Acknowledgments

I am especially thankful to my students for their willingness to be a part of the enumerator team. Additionally, I would like to thank the respondents in this study who were willing to spend time with the research team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Discussing about stigma warrants us to provide a disclaimer on the identity-first language used in this manuscript through the use of the word “offenders” which may carry a pejorative connotation. In this regard, we concur with the argument by Tran et al. (2018) who highlighted on the dilemma between wanting to use a respectful language and to be concise (as using the word “offenders” is more concise than describing the person as “those who have offended”). In our paper, taking into consideration of the need to be concise in our reporting, we will use the word “offenders” throughout the manuscript.

2. The surveys were done in Malay, therefore, we did not exactly use the word “offender”, rather the Malay word “pesalah” which has a mild connotation (literally translated to “wrongdoers”), as opposed to “penjenayah” (literally translated to “criminals”) which carries a damaging label. In addition, we focused on those “going through the criminal justice system”, rather than the hard status as an offender.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Universiti Sains Malaysia.