Sports Aggression and Injury: Incorporating The Criminal Justice System into the Sports Industry

Abstract

Current trends suggest that playing professional sports poses a considerable risk of injury, especially if driven by aggressive tactical advances. The lack of definite game rules that penalise athletes who inflict harm and cause severe injuries to their opponents suggests the need for harmonisation with the national criminal justice system. It is timely for sports policymakers to look at this issue through the lens of economics (sports industry) as well as law—a process that requires them devise penalty designs for specific acts of sports aggression. This article examines the Malaysian criminal law standards in protecting the interest of the sports industry. Through a qualitative method and doctrinal content analysis, the issues of criminalisation of acts in sports and the qualification of sports violence as a crime are analysed. The approach is to evaluate the specific role of criminal law provision (on criminals and victims in sports) in professional sports and at all levels of sports activities involving aggression and injury. Given that the Malaysian sports industry is continuously evolving and associated with many aggressive sports, it is in the best interest of the relevant sports organisations and organisers to minimise injury rates and overly violent play. This article considers the characteristics of the generic and specific objects of criminal legal justice in the context of the Penal Code, which must correspond to the degree of encroachment danger in the sporting setting, based on the conceptual rules relating to the sports industry’s significant activities.