Titles on our Children, Young People and Families list range from bestselling textbooks, including the Open University Childhood series, critical monographs such as those in the international Sociology of Children and Families series and the Families, Relationships and Societies journal.
Long-established, this interdisciplinary list brings together work across Childhood Studies, Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. It supports students in their successful study, challenges current policy and practice and offers practical guidance to those working with children and young people in often difficult circumstances.
Children, Young People and Families
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This chapter provides an overview of the connections between sport-based programming and crime prevention. Many sport-based youth programmes purport to prevent youth crime or youth involvement in gangs. Sports stand with several other activities (for example, education, mentoring, religious teaching, and volunteering) that may spur positive social development among children and youth. Crime prevention strategies have tried to build on the popularity and benefits of sports activities to promote youth development and to influence risk and resiliency factors associated with criminal involvement. Various sport-based crime prevention programmes have been implemented but very few of them have been subjected to a rigorous evaluation. When research has been done, the relationship between these programmes and desistance from crime was difficult to disentangle. In addition to identifying the problem to be addressed, this chapter questions how much is known about the phenomenon because of lack of theorizing and rigorous research in the area.
This chapter focuses on the role of coaches and the impact of coaching practices on youth development. Research thus far emphasizes the crucial importance of coaches and facilitators in fostering positive youth development outcomes. There is also currently great interest as to how coaches and programme facilitators might improve their current practices. While it seems obvious that coaches and other programme facilitators have unique opportunities to influence youth, there is not yet a consensus on exactly what differentiates effective from ineffective coaches. Factors such as leadership, expertise, motivation, education, and experience are often cited, together with an ability to form meaningful relationships with youth. Another suggestion is that coaches and facilitators could encourage positive youth development by incorporating teaching life skills in sports programmes. Unfortunately, many current coaches do not have the knowledge, skills, or training to do this. There follows a discussion of effective coaching strategies and leadership style to encouraging development. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the key findings of recent research on the role and practices of sport coaches, facilitators, and volunteers involved in sport-based positive development programmes.
This chapter reviews attempts to prevent crime at the primary level. The primary level of crime prevention refers to efforts involving interventions that address social, environmental, or situational conditions associated with various criminal activities. There are a variety of explanations as to why sport participation may give rise to these positive outcomes. Some proponents believe that participation in sports builds character and encourages moral development. Others suggest that sports provide individuals with positive contacts, role models, and mentors who model positive behaviour and help discourage participation in crime. Another popular explanation is that sports act as a diversion from criminal activities. Some also believe that sports participation encourages positive developmental outcomes and the development of important life skills. Finally, some argue that crime prevention often presupposes inclusion and social cohesion, thus the idea that sport can play a unique role in this respect by generating social capital and by helping mobilize communities and promote solidarity. This chapter concludes with a discussion of access and exclusion from sports participation. This problem is reflected in the fact that lower-socio-economic populations tend to have lower rates of sport participation.
This chapter reviews crime prevention efforts at the secondary level and focuses on interventions that target individuals or groups known or assumed to be at risk of criminal involvement. The chapter opens with a discussion of the underlying foundations of risk-based programming. There are several problems with this approach, including its tendency to ignore structural factors and risks around social exclusion, as well as the stigmatization associated with being labelled as a ‘youth at risk’. The chapter then shifts to a discussion of the positive youth development approach, an approach that regards youth as a resource to be developed rather than a problem to be solved. Next, some consideration is given to how sports may be used as a ‘hook’ to engage youth in other prosocial activities, and how the type of sport may affect the outcome.
This chapter reviews attempts to prevent crime at the tertiary level. The tertiary level of crime prevention entails a range of interventions within or outside the criminal justice system to prevent individuals already engaged in criminal activity from reoffending and encouraging them to desist from crime and successfully reintegrating into society. This chapter offers a discussion of the notion of desistance and the research associated with this area and reviews programmes administered in both correctional and community settings (for example, with gang-involved youth). This is followed by a discussion of a more system-wide programme that was instituted in Thailand, known as the Bounce Be Good Sport Club. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact these programmes have on social reintegration and the implications these findings have for creating and revising other programmes.
This chapter presents an attempt to conceptualize the links between criminological theory and sport-based crime prevention programmes. The focus here is on understanding how participation in sport-based prevention programmes at the community level may affect the likelihood that the targeted youth will become or continue to be involved with criminal activities or criminal groups. Efforts are made to clarify existing concepts and connect them to the theories commonly used to understand youth crime and desistance from crime. The chapter also attempts to articulate a theory of change, a prerequisite to forming a cogent programme logic model and to conducting programme evaluations. The theory incorporates key concepts based on individual differences and personality development and then attempts to address social-psychological concerns identified by desistance and social support theories.
Sports-based crime prevention programmes are becoming increasingly popular world-wide but until now there has been very little research on the effectiveness of such approaches.
Bringing together authoritative evidence from existing programmes, the authors identify and analyse emerging successful practices. Covering mentoring and coaching, particularly as they relate to Positive Youth Development (PYD) programmes, the authors explore how the development of core life skills can improve individual resilience and decrease the risk of criminal involvement. The book conceptualizes the links between criminological theory and PYD and gives recommendations for future policy and practice.
This chapter offers a discussion of crime prevention through sports and offers some working definitions of key terms like sport and sport participation. The next section consists of a review of the common claims made by proponents of sport-based crime prevention programmes. For example, some supporters seem to think that sports inevitably lead to good outcomes despite a great deal of empirical evidence suggesting otherwise. Other proponents claim that they can prevent youth crime and gang recruitment despite a lack of empirical evidence. Potential negative aspects of sport participation (for example, increased likelihood of substance abuse and in some cases criminal behaviour) are also discussed in this chapter. The chapter concludes with a critical review of the risk factor prevention paradigm and its applicability to sport-based crime prevention.
How can young people’s activism help us to rethink community development? This collection explores the critical role that young people are playing in building a more hopeful and democratic future. The book has three aims: to show how a focus on ‘youth’ can contribute to sharpening understandings of community development; to foreground conceptualisations of radical democracy within the rethinking of community development; and to link developments within new youth social movements to the work of youth workers and community development practitioners and thus contribute to rethinking this relationship. The collection includes chapters on the eco movement, the struggles of refugees and the Black Lives Matter movement, and on changing understandings of sexual citizenship, highlighting, above all, emancipatory struggles and gestures of solidarity. Some chapters come from a European context, but they are made more complete and complex by the presence of writers and practitioners whose lives began in the Global South in countries such as India, Kenya and Brazil. The rich accounts counter the individualistic nature of capitalist society and reject the view that there is no alternative. In varying ways, authors present prefigurative practices of hope as an essential element of social movements for rethinking community development. Above all, the book calls for us to act in alliance with young people who are at the forefront of radical democratic practices of community development all over the world.
Reflecting on the contributing chapters of the book, the chapter argues that prefigurative practices of hope are an essential element of social movements and community development. It positions hope as collective action, that has the capacity to emerge out of and in spite of other emotions, such as anger and fear in the face of climate catastrophe and the continued fallout from COVID-19. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, the chapter theorises practices of imagination and action distinguishing educated hope from facile optimism. Drawing also on Braidotti and Derrida, it suggests that community development might open up new spaces ‘beyond binaries’ where exploration of friendship and the (im)possibility of common ground can flourish. The authors propose that hopeful radical democratic practice begins from certain refusals: of authoritarian populism and of neoliberal capitalist realism – in order to practise the inauguration of alternative, freer and more egalitarian forms. They argue that seeing young people as a forefront may require new ways of acting with and being in community.
