Background Life satisfaction among young offenders may be affected by the subjective experience of their social status and by the feeling of being a ‘loser’ compared with others, but it is not clear what variables affect such experiences in this group.

Aims To examine relationships of type of sentence (prison or probation) and of gender with subjective social status, sense of defeat and life satisfaction among young offenders.

Methods One hundred and five participants were randomly selected from a cohort of young offenders, stratifying for sentence type and for gender. They were interviewed by trained and experienced interviewers.

Results Young people in a correctional facility experienced lower life satisfaction and greater sense of defeat than those on probation. Independently of judicial measure, low life satisfaction was correlated with sense of defeat among young men but not young women, whereas among young women, but not young men, low life satisfaction was associated with low subjective status.