Sport can tackle the problem of youth justice disproportionality

The evidence of inequality is stark – and beneath it lies a tangled web of underlying issues, including poverty, health, lack of opportunities, lack of role models, adverse childhood experiences, education, mental health and racism.

Children from ethnically diverse backgrounds are over-represented in youth justice, and are also significantly under-represented in sport and physical activity participation.

It is this disturbing evidence that spurred my organisation, the Alliance of Sport in Criminal Justice, to partner with the Youth Justice Board and launch the Levelling the Playing Field project earlier this year.

Over the next three years, we will use sport and physical activity to improve health and life outcomes for 11,200 ethnically diverse children in England and Wales who are at risk of entering, or already involved with, the youth justice system.

Thanks to a £1m grant from the London Marathon Charitable Trust, we’ve partnered with more than 70 sport organisations in London, the West Midlands, Gwent and South Yorkshire that are embedded within their local communities.

They use a huge variety of methods to make a positive impact: developing supportive relationships, employing relatable local role models, youth work, mentoring, volunteering, employment, education or training opportunities, giving young people ownership through leadership roles, collaborating with local agencies such as police and social services to increase trust and increase the support network, removing cost barriers, and addressing local issues such as gangs, anti-social behaviour and county lines exploitation.

Take InPower, one of our local delivery partners in Wolverhampton, for example. Led by Daryl Chambers, the organisation uses martial arts as a tool to build resilience, social development and holistic change in young people, 85 per cent of whom are from ethnically diverse backgrounds. “We give them the environment to let them discover for themselves how great they can be,” says Chambers.

In Sheffield, Safiya Saeed founded Reach Up Youth five years ago. Sport and peer mentoring play a major part in her organisation’s success in engaging 12- to 21-year-olds in the diverse but deprived area of Burngreave. They are a delivery partner on Levelling the Playing Field.

Blue, red, grey and black T-shirts denote young people’s status within the organisation’s “Big Brother Burngreave” (boys’) and “Sisterhood” (girls’) programmes, with each level within the hierarchy acting as leaders and mentors to those below them.

Leaders are in charge of activities, which include football, basketball, dodgeball, badminton, multigym, athletics, cooking and music. These run alongside training and support with issues such as mental health, first aid, knife crime, identity, racism, self-esteem, insecurity, gang culture, body image, forced marriages and self-empowerment.

“We use sport as the ‘hook’,” says Saeed. “It’s how we get young people’s attention. Everything after that is decided by their needs. Without sport, we won’t get them in the doors.”

In the deprived south London boroughs of Croydon and Lambeth, another of our delivery partners, Urban Yogis, use yoga to engage and divert local young people away from crime, gangs and antisocial behaviour.

Research has shown adverse childhood experiences to be a common factor in children who become involved in the justice system. This is where yoga has proven particularly effective with 9- to 18-year-olds on the Urban Yogis programme, many of whom are referred from youth offending teams or social care.

“Yoga is an excellent tool for helping young people who have experienced trauma and might be living that experience daily. It has a great impact on them mentally and physically,” says director Ben Eckett.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham collect data from children, coaches, and mentors across our local delivery partners, focusing on the voice of the child to build a large evidence base of good practice in using sport to address disproportionality.

That evidence base will be used as a basis to scale-up across the rest of the country and embed the use of sport in policy and practice at the highest level of government.

The ultimate aim is to ensure anyone at risk of entering the criminal justice system has access to an effective, life-enhancing sport-based initiative that will steer them in a more positive direction. In doing so, we’ll help create a fair and open criminal justice system where no person faces discrimination.

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