Sports have the po­ten­tial to serve as a so­cial con­trol strat­e­gy of de­viance and vi­o­lence among the youth pop­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, the sport in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies have to be part of a holis­tic so­cio-eco­nom­ic pack­age de­signed to ad­dress the so­cial prob­lems in the com­mu­ni­ties where so­cial de­viance and vi­o­lence is most like­ly to oc­cur. Er­go, the lead­er­ship com­pe­ten­cies of the ad­min­is­tra­tors, co­or­di­na­tors, and coach­es have to be of the high­est qual­i­ty with the sup­port of par­ents, rel­a­tives and guardians.

The ben­e­fits of sports par­tic­i­pa­tion cov­er a range of im­por­tant ar­eas of youth de­vel­op­ment. The youth can ben­e­fit from de­vel­op­ing a habit of in­volve­ment in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty which can ex­tend through­out her/his life­time. A phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty habit al­so has the po­ten­tial of im­prov­ing the fit­ness lev­el of the youth. In ad­di­tion to di­rect sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty ben­e­fits, youth in­volve­ment in sport can al­so con­tribute to es­tab­lish­ing im­por­tant proso­cial and emo­tion­al skills, moral val­ues and high lev­els of self-es­teem.

Through bas­ket­ball, The 'Hoop of Life' project was aimed at so­cial con­trol of 'youth at risk' in crime 'hotspot' ar­eas through­out the coun­try. The Life­S­port pro­gramme was al­so di­rect­ed at young males at 'risk' of en­gag­ing in so­cial­ly ques­tion­able lifestyles. Lennox Bernard's 'Give a Sport­ing Chance,' in his con­tri­bu­tion to the Ryan Re­port (2013) “No Time to Quit: En­gag­ing Youth At Risk,” al­so ad­dressed the po­ten­tial of sports as a mech­a­nism of ad­dress­ing so­cial de­viance. Each of these projects will be analysed from a sport­ing per­spec­tive in sub­se­quent columns.

How­ev­er, any at­tempt to ef­fec­tive­ly use sport as a means of ad­dress­ing 'youth at risk' re­quires an an­a­lyt­i­cal frame­work to as­sess de­viance and col­lect ro­bust and re­li­able da­ta to con­stant­ly eval­u­ate the over­all pro­gramme. To date, there has been much con­ver­sa­tion about the use of sports pro­grammes but there has been lit­tle strate­gic in­for­ma­tion forth­com­ing of how strate­gies are to be de­signed, im­ple­ment­ed and mea­sured. For in­stance who is de­fined as 'youth at risk'? Will there be con­ti­nu­ity of the pro­grammes if spon­sored by the state and gov­ern­ment changes?

There are sev­er­al im­por­tant ques­tions that have to be ad­dressed such as what con­clu­sive ev­i­dence ex­ists that sup­ports sport as the po­ten­tial an­swer to the va­ri­ety of so­cial is­sues fac­ing young peo­ple to­day? Can it be said with as­sur­ance that sport is the best means to in­cul­cate im­por­tant life skills? Is sport the fo­cus? Are there oth­er pro­grammes al­ready ex­ist­ing to which the re­sources could be com­bined to pro­vide greater op­por­tu­ni­ty to the par­tic­i­pants? Is the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise of sports psy­chol­o­gists, so­cial work­ers etc to be used in con­junc­tion with coach­es and oth­er sports of­fi­cials?

It must not be as­sumed that play­ing sport au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­sults in a per­son be­ing an ef­fec­tive coach or men­tor es­pe­cial­ly when deal­ing with 'youth at risk'. How are the pro­grammes to be mea­sured in terms of out­comes? Is the im­ple­men­ta­tion ap­proach top-down or col­lab­o­ra­tive where par­tic­i­pants are part of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process? How is da­ta to be col­lect­ed and used in the re-eval­u­a­tion of the pro­grammes?

If the prob­lems fac­ing 'youth at risk' are re­lat­ed to struc­tured eco­nom­ic de­cline and in­equal­i­ties in the com­mu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied, why is there a be­lief that or­ga­nized youth sports pro­grammes will solve the many prob­lems? In oth­er words, if at the end of the day the youth has to re­turn to so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions that do not al­low him/her to use his new­ly ac­quired skills, what is the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the pro­gramme on its own?

As much as the in­ten­tion may be good, it is im­por­tant that those who want to use sport as a means of qui­et­ing so­cial de­viance, to re­mem­ber that sport is on­ly a tool in the de­vel­op­ment process and as such must not be ex­pect­ed to pro­duce mir­a­cles on its own.

"I don't feel it is nec­es­sary to know ex­act­ly what I am. The main in­ter­est in life and work is to be­come some­one else that you were not in the be­gin­ning." Michel Fou­cault