Sport and Crime Prevention in Canada

In this chapter, we explore the intersection of Sport for Development (SfD) and ‘sport for crime prevention’ in the context of SfD programs operating in Canada. Although the global SfD movement has largely focused on interventions in the Global South, SfD programs have been increasingly developed in (largely urban) regions of the Global North to address a variety of perceived social problems in underprivileged communities. Although there are signs of increased overlap between these areas, SfD interventions do not frequently identify crime prevention as an explicit goal. We complicate that separation, however, by examining the ways that SfD actors invoke (or challenge) discourses that position sport as an antidote to the ‘problems’ of social deviance and youth delinquency, with a specific critical focus on SfD organizations operating in Canada. In so doing, we consider SfD's role in the reproduction of problematic ideas about criminality among marginalized social groups and provide a novel analysis of the confluence of SfD and crime prevention efforts in the Global North