Abstract: The objects of judicial work such as offenders in the community often suffer from social stigma and social exclusion due to their past experiences. The reconstruction of their social identities becomes the core goal of emotional governance for these special groups. By exploring the emotional status of offenders in the community in different social interaction situations and its impact on the construction of their identities, we find out that they acquire negative emotional experience in their daily life and construct a rejected identity as a ‘criminal’; in the community correction system, they acquire passive emotional experience and construct a legitimate identity as an ‘offender’. In the context of social work practice, they obtain highly emotional experience and develop a project-related identity as a ‘community member’. Professional social work services should be introduced to reduce the negative emotional experience of offenders while awakening their positive emotions in the process of social interaction, which can be served as the key emotional governance strategy for this special group.

Key words: emotional governance, identity construction, offenders in the community, social work