Sport as vehicle of crime and drug prevention and social inclusion objectives

sport has no intrinsic essence that makes it suitable as a means to promote social goods. Rather than seeing sport as an alternative to delinquency, discrimination and violence, and more, we need to recognize sport as a reflection of, and as an integral part of, society and that delinquency, discrimination and violence are also aspects of life played out in sport. If we want to use sport in a productive manner as a vehicle of social change, this must be recognized as well as the potential attributed.For sport activities to contribute to social goods, they need to be strategically designed with a clearly elaborated program theory. If this is attained, sports-based intervention can result in diversion and in social change working for long term crime and drug prevention, especially when focusing on the integration of education in the sport activities and downplaying competitive elements. However, the benefits of providing sport opportunities cannot be reduced to such expected outcomes, but should instead be recognized for the value of enabling participation on the conditions of young persons,themselves. Accordingly, expectations of outcomes must be calibrated with what is possible to achieve, and the complex of social structures at the cause of social problems, crime and drugs must be recognized. In this sense, the provision of sport can be seen as much as a social right for young persons, as it is proclaimed a vehicle of social objectives beyond the practice of sport itself. Finally, I believe it is important to reflect about the context and frameworks of the integration of sport within the realm of social policy, in terms of crime and drug prevention. We need to reflect on how problems are made intelligible in order to make them potentially targeted bymeans of sport, what dimensions of social problems and causes of crime that becomes invisible and not potentially targeted by sport, what premises underlie our understanding of sport as a means of provision of social interventions and what it does to our general understanding of crime, drugs, social problems and social exclusionas well as social policy, when sport is conceived of as a means of crime prevention