Crime Prevention Outcomes and Implications for Future Investments

Abstract

This concluding chapter discusses where sports fit in overall crime prevention strategies and whether further investments in sport-based crime prevention programmes are justified. Popular interest in such programmes and limited empirical evidence on their impacts underscore the need for further research. Although useful knowledge exists about what can increase the positive development aspects of a sport-based programme, it remains very difficult to know for whom sport-based crime prevention interventions are most effective, and what they should consist of so as to improve their effectiveness in preventing crime or violence. There is a critical need for substantial and rigorous evaluations. Unfortunately, crime prevention programmes are rarely evaluated, and many existing evaluations are methodologically weak and overly simplistic in their theorizing about the causes of youth crime. Future research should refine existing categorizations of sport-based programmes and attempt to quantify the specific outcomes attributable to sport participation among other related crime prevention outcomes observed in multi-component sport-based programmes.