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.
