Outdoor Adventure Camps: Personal Development through Challenge

he attributes and skills required for a successful criminal career are numerous and are acquired and developed through a mixture of personality, contacts and background. Essential ingredients would include initiative, cooperation, resourcefulness, risk-taking, trust, group-cohesiveness and physical fitness; proficiency in these areas is inversely proportional to the likelihood of apprehension. However, only a small percentage of offenders make good criminals, for most of their acts are petty, spontaneous, ill-considered (Murray & Borowski 1986) and quite often made under the influence of drugs or alcohol and driven by a sense of desperation or despair (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1987). Many programs, particularly for youth, make use of activities or outdoor adventure as a means of developing personal attributes such as self-esteem, confidence, responsibility and trust in a positive way, and building on individuals ' achievements and success to encourage further development. This is a major role of sport and recreation in schools and youth clubs (Seagrave & Chu 1978), but it has been shown that some individuals do not respond to the competitive and over organised way in which many sports and activities are presente