Using ‘sport in the community schemes’ to tackle crime and drug use among young people: some policy issues and problems

This article seeks, first, to offer some critical comments on the policy issues and problems surrounding the use of sporting schemes as vehicles of social policy in which the intention is to reduce levels of crime, delinquency and drug ‘abuse’ among young people; second, to examine a point of fundamental importance in policy terms: do such schemes work? In this regard, it is claimed that relatively few of such schemes - which are largely premised upon a one-sided perception of sport - have built in processes for monitoring and evaluating their impact on levels of crime or drug use among young people. It is also argued that these methodological weaknesses are exacerbated by the absence of any clearly articulated theoretical rationale for these schemes, which means that, even where success for them is claimed, it is unclear what specific aspects of the schemes account for that claimed success.