Sport-based crime prevention enjoys a level of popularity and political support which, despite the boastful claims of its supporters, is not totally justified by its meagre success. Many sport-based youth programmes purport to prevent youth crime or youth involvement in gangs. Indeed, 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, usually targeting youth crime, have been implemented over the last two decades. Unfortunately, they are rarely subjected to anything close to a rigorous evaluation. As a result, many of these programmes continue to be funded despite their overly ambitious crime prevention objectives, the vague rationales for their activities, and the near-total absence of evidence of their impact on youth crime.

As one searches for new ideas to improve youth crime prevention, it is difficult to ignore the growing popularity of sport-based crime prevention programmes. Given the magnitude of social investments in such programmes and the programmes’ own unrelenting claims of success, one might reasonably expect to encounter many carefully designed and monitored programmes. Instead, what one finds is better described as the triumph of enthusiasm over reason. Proponents of these programmes are undeterred by their lack of demonstrable crime prevention outcomes.

At best, the idea of preventing crime through sports activities is based on a hazy concept that perpetuates itself without clear definitions, a coherent theoretical basis, or any persuasive empirical evidence. Unfortunately, that kind of unbridled enthusiasm for intuitively attractive but poorly informed or uncritical interventions is not uncommon in the field of crime prevention. Also disconcerting is the fact that unsuccessful or unproven prevention programmes are rarely abandoned or discarded; their champions are not that easily persuaded to change their strategies. The field of crime prevention often resembles a desert of ‘walking dead’ concepts where zombie ideas never die.

Strangely, criminology has not paid significant attention to the role of sports in crime prevention.