Sports has long been recog­nised as a tool for ad­dress­ing so­cial de­viance. It pro­motes val­ues such as team­work, dis­ci­pline, re­spect and re­silience, which can pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence be­hav­iour and so­cial in­te­gra­tion.

Re­search sug­gests that struc­tured sports pro­grammes can de­ter in­di­vid­u­als, es­pe­cial­ly youth, from en­gag­ing in de­viant be­hav­iour by pro­vid­ing pos­i­tive out­lets and sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ments.

Travis Hirschi’s [1969] So­cial Bond The­o­ry states that in­di­vid­u­als who are in­volved in struc­tured, so­cial­ly ac­cept­able ac­tiv­i­ties with shared val­ues and be­liefs are less like­ly to en­gage in de­viant be­hav­iour. Or­gan­ised sports at the grass­roots lev­el, com­mu­ni­ty, school and pro­fes­sion­al lev­els pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for es­tab­lish­ing such con­nec­tions with coach­es, team­mates and oth­er per­son­nel.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Ed­win Suther­land’s Dif­fer­en­tial As­so­ci­a­tion the­o­ry [1947], claims that de­viant be­hav­iour is learnt from en­gag­ing with de­viant per­sons. There­fore, sports can be an av­enue where per­sons are ex­posed to pro-so­cial be­hav­iour that pro­vides a pos­i­tive al­ter­na­tive to en­gag­ing with de­viant per­sons.

Hart­mann and Mas­soglia [2007] test the re­la­tion­ship be­tween high school sports par­tic­i­pa­tion and de­viance by type of de­viant be­hav­iour and lev­el of ath­let­ic in­volve­ment based on lon­gi­tu­di­nal da­ta. They con­clud­ed that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween ath­let­ic in­volve­ment and de­viance varies sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­pend­ing up­on the de­viant be­hav­iours ex­am­ined. They stat­ed: “Specif­i­cal­ly, shoplift­ing de­creas­es with sports par­tic­i­pa­tion, while drunk­en dri­ving in­creas­es. More­over, these ef­fects ex­tend fur­ther in­to the life course [age 30] than has been demon­strat­ed in any pre­vi­ous study and hold across all our mea­sures of sports par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Camiré, Trudel, and Forner­is [2012]: “Coach­es un­der­stood their stu­dent-ath­letes pre­ex­ist­ing make-up and had philoso­phies based on pro­mot­ing the de­vel­op­ment of stu­dent-ath­letes. [Ad­di­tion­al­ly,] coach­es had strate­gies de­signed to coach life skills and ed­u­cate stu­dent-ath­letes about the trans­fer­abil­i­ty of the skills they learned in sport. Al­though vari­a­tions were re­port­ed, coach­es and stu­dent-ath­letes gen­er­al­ly be­lieved that stu­dent-ath­letes can trans­fer the skills learned in sport to oth­er ar­eas of life.”

There are nu­mer­ous ex­am­ples of pro­grammes im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress so­cial de­viance through sports. The Mid­night Bas­ket­ball pro­gramme was de­vel­oped in the 1980s in the US to ad­dress in­ner-city crime by keep­ing ur­ban youth off the streets by of­fer­ing an al­ter­na­tive [sport] to de­viant crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. The ef­fec­tive­ness of the pro­gramme has been high­ly de­bat­able [Hart­mann 2001].

A sim­i­lar pro­gramme ‘Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League’ was im­ple­ment­ed in 2012 to ad­dress crime in ‘hot’ spots ar­eas through­out Trinidad. On­ly the of­fi­cials in­volved in the three-year [2012-2015] pro­gramme trum­pet­ed its suc­cess­es. There is no known rig­or­ous, ob­jec­tive analy­sis of the pro­gramme. Hart­mann’s [2001] analy­sis of the Mid­night Bas­ket­ball pro­gramme in the US should be in­for­ma­tive and in­struc­tive about fu­ture state sports pro­grammes to ad­dress so­cial de­viance.

There­fore, be­fore the state ex­pends tax­pay­ers’ monies on any pro-so­cial sports pro­gramme, the pro­grammes must be in­ten­tion­al­ly de­signed with a fo­cus on men­tor­ship, ed­u­ca­tion, and skills de­vel­op­ment to see mean­ing­ful out­comes. Poor­ly struc­tured pro­grammes may fail to in­stil the in­tend­ed val­ues or may even ex­ac­er­bate de­viant be­hav­iour by fos­ter­ing ag­gres­sion or ri­val­ry [Coal­ter, 2007].

Fur­ther­more, ac­cord­ing to Bai­ley et al. [2013], while sports pro­grammes can re­duce de­viance in the short term, sus­tained im­pact de­pends on on­go­ing sup­port and in­te­gra­tion with oth­er so­cial ser­vices. Sports pro­grammes alone may not ad­dress un­der­ly­ing so­cioe­co­nom­ic or psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors as­so­ci­at­ed with de­viant be­hav­iour, high­light­ing the need for a mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach.

There­fore, sev­er­al pre-plan­ning ques­tions have to be an­swered. Why is sport iden­ti­fied as the po­ten­tial an­swer to var­i­ous so­cial is­sues fac­ing the youth pop­u­la­tion? Is sport the best means to teach life skills? Is sport the fo­cus? Are there oth­er ex­ist­ing pro­grammes that could be com­bined to give par­tic­i­pants a more sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty? Will psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als be utilised? How are the pro­gramme out­comes to be mea­sured? Is the im­ple­men­ta­tion ap­proach top-down or col­lab­o­ra­tive where par­tic­i­pants are part of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process? How is the da­ta to be col­lect­ed? How will the da­ta be used in the re-eval­u­a­tion of the pro­gramme? Are for­mer or cur­rent ath­letes trained to work as coach­es or men­tors with at-risk youth to achieve de­sired re­sults?

Fur­ther­more, to what ex­tent will or­gan­ised youth sports be ef­fec­tive if the prob­lems fac­ing 'youth at risk' are re­lat­ed to struc­tured eco­nom­ic de­cline and in­equal­i­ties in the com­mu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied? If the youth have to re­turn to so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions that do not al­low her/him to use their new­ly ac­quired skills, how will they view the pro­gramme? Ad­di­tion­al­ly, state in­volve­ment does not guar­an­tee the con­ti­nu­ity of any pro­gramme when there is a change of gov­ern­ment.

As much as in­ten­tions are good, sport is on­ly a tool in the de­vel­op­ment process and must not be ex­pect­ed to pro­duce mir­a­cles in­de­pen­dent­ly.