LC458 - Social Policy: Review of Sport Intervention in Youth Prison

This report provides a comprehensive review of the article "Sport in a youth prison: male young offenders’ experiences of a sporting intervention," analyzing its arguments regarding the role of sports in rehabilitating young offenders and reducing reoffending rates. The review discusses the article's methodology, including the advantages and disadvantages of using observation and interviews for data collection. It also explores the connections between the article's arguments and broader societal issues such as social inequalities, social inclusion/exclusion, and poverty/deprivation, highlighting how sports-based initiatives can promote personal development, improve social skills, and create opportunities for young people in custody. The report concludes that sporting practices can positively impact young people in prison environments, fostering self-esteem and enabling a move away from offending activities.

Social policy and Society
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Professor
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Institution
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Introduction
Generally, a social policy consists of principles, guidelines, and activities which tend to
affect the living conditions of human being. Bonoli (2010) shows that social policy is
always within the political setting or governmental setting such as the social services
and the welfare state. Different sources have explained social policy in different
perspectives. The department of social policy in the school of economics in London has
defined social policy as an applied subject that is entirely concerned with the societal
needs thus helping the students to foster and withdraw much knowledge which is
relevant for social science disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and political
science. Therefore, in simple words, the social policy discusses the systematic
evaluation of societies on responding to social need. Breheny and Stephens (2010)
argues that the issue of social policy was established as a complement of social work
back in the 20th century.
The essay uses one of the articles which entirely discusses on social policy. The article
used is Parker, A., Meek, R. and Lewis, G., 2014. Sport in a youth prison: male young
offenders' experiences of a sporting intervention. Journal of youth studies, 17(3),
pp.381-396.The article analyses the issue of social policy whereby it advocates for
support of youths in participating in social activities such as sports. The main discussion
of the essay comprises the arguments explained by the article, advantages and
disadvantages of methods used to collect information in the essay and lastly discussion
on how the arguments used in the article relates to normal inequalities, social
inclusion/exclusion and poverty/deprivation in the society. The conclusion summarizes
the key arguments outlined in the article section. Conley (2010) concludes by showing
that sports-based initiatives for youths in custody can play a key role in promoting
personal rehabilitation by clearly integrating the support programmes and the provision
services which are of benefits to the young people.
The main argument of the article shows how social activities such as sports focuses to
reduce the number of youths serving prison sentences in countries such as England
and Wales has been increasing from an year to another. The article indicates how
reoffending rates among the youth sentenced to custody remains the highest for all

prisons. Every year more than 71% of the prisoners comprise the young people. This
shows that youth offending has become an issue and much attention needed to curb it.
The need to reduce the reoffending rate by young people has initiated to development
of new projects and programs. Ehrenreich (2014) shows how the government has
initiated structuring interventions which emphasize mentoring aspects to the society and
training the young people on participating in social activities such as sport and leisure
opportunities in the country. Despite initiating the key processes to reduce youth-crime
and antisocial problems in these countries, only a few programs on sports-based
interventions have been evaluated. The article shows how the research was carried out
to determine how multimodal sports-based activities will help in reducing juvenile cases.
There is a summary of how existing evidence which shows how the sports-based
initiatives for young offenders in custody have been enhanced by the physical education
for the youths detained in Wales and England. Foley-Nicpon and Lee (2012) explains
the diverse range of personal motivations and the benefits such as reducing personal
stress, elevating the boredom and improving social skills thus helping to support the
social rehabilitation for young people .
In addition, the article analyses the community sports-based initiatives which provides
the rehabilitation tools for youth's delinquency. Academic research clearly describes
how the rearrangement of a marginalized youth group in the community has been
prevented from criminal activities by the use of sports. There are sports activities such
as the Midnight basketball programmers which focused on reducing the crime rates
associated with the youths in the community. According to Griggs et al (2013) the sport
counseling intervention programme has successfully incorporated direct participation
thus reducing the reoffending rates especially for youths who have undergone a number
of training. Also, different authors have argued that sport is the successful activity is
discussing the proximal risk factors associated with the youth's crime in society. For
example, we have poor interpersonal skills and the poor social aspects which
characterize the negative peer groups and improper use of leisure time. According to
Currie (2010) the research carried in the article indicates the findings which highlight on
how physical and social aspects of sports have played a key role in improving personal
self-esteem and social skills for young people. In simple words the physical activities

and sports, in general, they have effective means which helps in engaging the young
people in activities that are beneficial thus making them move away from their idling
zones. Also, Huber and Stephens (2012) includes that sport based activities formulate
paths for rehabilitating young people thus reducing the crime rate within the society.
The other argument raised by the article is the issue of sport and young people in the
custody. From the findings, it's clear that juveniles have the highest rates of participation
in the physical activities in the incarcerated population of Wales and England. Also, the
physical education is compulsory for the two nations thus providing an equitable
education provision especially to those who are in custody in the society. Also, the
guidelines and principles of offering the physical education ensure that all provisions
have to be accompanied with the qualifications, able to promote better methods of
spending the leisure activities and key principles that can be used to address the
offending behavior within the community. Jewell (2012) describes that the recreational
physical activity, surveys from juveniles and information from the inspectorate of prisons
shows that the number of young people who have been visiting gyms per week has
increased by 5%. This shows that large numbers of youths in the community are aware
of the importance of physical activities thus indulging themselves to new activities which
helps in passing time effectively. As the number of young increased in gym centers, it's
unfortunate that our prisons neither record any improvement nor changes to allow
young people. Out of the 18 prison centers only one person who has been noted
practicing on physical exercise with a few going for a gym session at least once per
week. This, therefore, shows that enthusiasm for the sport is evident in the population
and thus juvenile centers are focusing on alternatives, nonoffending activities and
employment pathways which are always cited in the group. Levy (2010) proves how
these methods help in refraining from the offending activities since young people are
active concentrating on sports.
After much effort has been employed in curbing the crimes associated with young
people, there are a lot of benefits which have been noted in the community. First, there
is a reduction of almost 10% on the reoffending after one and a half year since young
offenders have been participating in intensive programmes which incorporates the

physical activities with vocational training. Also, the offending reaction has also been
characterized by the non-sporting programmes. Therefore, authors have argued that
sporting should not be used as the only social activity that will reduce crimes. Mills et
al., (2011) shows that sporting is not only the option to be seen as the panacea to youth
crime but it should be viewed as the initial engagement for the psychological benefit for
the entire custodial environment.
Of course for sporting activities to be successful in the custody then careful programme
planning and delivery method need to b revised. We have a number of authors who
have argued differently on how to control young people. For example Morel and Palier,
(2011) shows how participation in traditional Tae Kwan Do has facilitated the
psychological emphasis thus decreasing the entire juvenile delinquents since there is an
increasingly aggressive tendency. More important according to Fried (2016) is that we
need to explore the prisoner's perceptions on sporting activities thus helping to raise
discussion and decisions which reveals how young people change their attitudes
towards the life in custody. The aim was to identify how young people motivations for
joining physical activities forms a based initiative in prison with a direct emphasis on the
psychological position and the rehabilitative consequences.
The methodology used shows that there was empirical data which was derived from the
research which was carried out at institutions which were located in England catering for
more than 400 juveniles. The entire prison claims to have been providing a quality
environment to all participants getting the education services weekly. The education
services are supplemented with the various employment programmes for young people.
Resnik, Patrone and Peddada (2010) explains on how the study it has clearly used the
traditional qualitative approaches such as observation, use of interviews and documents
so as to come up with the apt information that explores the relevance of the sport based
in the research question. The advantage of this type of methodology is that there was
field work document that recorded everything that was happening in the study. Also,
Scherrer and Woodford (2013) discusses how observations and use of interviews are
advantageous in the sense that they assisted in capturing the educational activities both
in the classroom and also in physical education settings. Also, there were discussions

with mentors, physical education staff and caseworkers all which are advantages of
methodology in the research. The disadvantages associated with these methodological
types are; observation can be affected by personal bias thus getting wing information.
On another hand, the article discusses issues related to social inequalities, social
inclusion/exclusion and poverty/deprivation. According to my point of view, it's clear that
the issue of personal motivations for sport forms a basis for social inclusion. The case
outlined in the article shows how juvenile youths are being cared and incorporated in
the norms of society even after committing the crimes. Establishing sports academies
and also encouraging sporting activities in the custody encourages a large number of
young people to have an interest in sports thus moving away from crimes. The article
also indicates how society is working to eradicate poverty. Initiating sporting activities
means preparing youths for new opportunities. Titmuss (2018) proves that currently the
entire world is more on physical exercises which we do believe they have created
employment for many thus moving away from the poverty level. In addition, the issue of
social policy in the article is based on physical exercises which tend to bring people
together and social values which have positive impacts. The article also fights for social
inequality within the country. By incorporating sporting activities into prisons shows how
society is enhancing the concept of equality. It is inhuman to ignore prisoners in our
society. Allowing our young people to undergo rehabilitation processed shows how
society adheres to principles of social policy. Most of the societies usually ignore
prisoners because they believe they are bad people to society but in the real sense not
true.
Conclusion
Therefore, to sum up, the findings of the research on young people in juvenile prisons
illustrated a clear example of the aspect of social policy. The article highlighted the
potential for sporting practices thus engaging the young people in rehabilitative
endeavors in the country. According to Titmuss (2018) the experiences gained from
sporting practices determines ones social and psychological benefits which impact the
young people in the prison environment positively. Furthermore, the discussion has
analyzed how sporting benefits affect one's self-esteem and social skills which assists

young people to re-envisage for more positive benefits in future thus enabling a
distance away from the offending activities in society. The multiagency support
discussed by the article has provided maximum support for sports development in the
society. At a practical level, one can argue that sporting activities provide an opportunity
that builds one's self-esteem and thus giving hope to young people who should always
be working hard while anticipating good life but not doing unethical issues in the society.
All the resources used to describe the research topic enabled the participants to
develop a sense of citizenship, able to raise a voice in case of any issue and above all
developing self-advocacy. With all these skills and attributes then young people are fully
equipped to air their needs which in turn helps to increase help and support that brings
change and transition back to society.

References
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