While working for the Youth Offending Service, I used a range of interventions with young people to help reduce their likelihood of reoffending. I became concerned that some of these interventions required the young people to have a higher appreciation of their own (and others') emotions than they appeared able to demonstrate. I felt that this might not only be severely reducing the effectiveness of the work, but also that difficulties with emotions might actually be a criminogenic need (a risk factor for offending) for these young people, not currently being addressed. I therefore used my PhD research to begin to identify whether emotional intelligence could be viewed as a risk or a protective factor for offending. I decided to use a mixed-methods approach involving questionnaires (quantitative) and semi-structured interviews (qualitative). I wanted to look beneath the statistics, and ensure that the young people had a voice within the research. The interviews also acted as a check for the validity of the questionnaires, especially when, as data gathering progressed, there began to be a reason to doubt. Several themes emerged from the views expressed by the young people, which were useful for a deeper understanding of the pertinent issues. [This content is provided in the format of an e-book.]