Sport and Crime

Abstract

Sport and crime possess the power to stir emotion and arouse debate; most people have opinions on both. Many believe a relationship exists between the two but as Francis and Braggins contend, the relationship between sport and crime is complex. For some, sport is a bastion of physical prowess and moral virtue; abiding by the rules and playing fair is considered a vehicle to encourage the wayward to veer from potential deviance or to rehabilitate offenders. A surfeit of programs designed to use sport as a method of crime control currently exist. However, sport itself contains many paradoxes and in some cases has become a realm for criminal behavior: corruption, bribery, doping, discrimination, violence, hooliganism, and a host of other undesirable behaviors are all evidenced in the delivery and practice of sport. Thus, the Hydra-headed character of sport makes the correlate between sport and crime a sometimes controversial milieu.