Sport and Crime: Towards a critical criminology of sport
It might be unusual to start with mentioning the acknowledgements in a book review but here we go.
Laura Kelly and Emma Poulton are mentioned as originators of the idea for this book and I can attest that ten years ago I advised Routledge to publish it. The book in hand is the successor text to that sadly unpublished one.
And to look even earlier in the book we might ask why the book is in sport and leisure series not a criminology one?
But as the Oxford Handbook of Sports History (Edelman and Wilson, 2017) contains only 4 mentions of ‘crime’ and one of the grand texts aimed at criminology students (Newburn, 2013) barely mentions sport we should not be surprised.
I am extremely grateful to Andy Millie for pushing me and Bristol University/Policy Press for bearing with me in getting my book accepted as a criminology one.
And whilst we are still looking at such ephemera I must take issue with the claim ‘that this is the first book to fully explore the connections between sports studies and criminology’ (website and back-of-book blurb!).
Introduction
I am cited on page 1 in the Introduction as noticing the ‘sheer potential for a distinctive criminology of sport’. I am mentioned amongst a number of others who I also acknowledge - such as Meek (2013) and Nichols (2010). I give a chapter to considering whether sport can prevent crime or rehabilitate the convicted as those two argue. I’m more equivocal. Millward et al engage in this debate in Chapter 4.
They note Avi Brisman’s review of my book in which he suggests my work was an ‘opening bell or starting pistol’ and likening me to a ‘father wanting acknowledgement of paternity without the responsibilities of child-rearing’. They are kinder but I’m going to admit Avi - who I know and respect - has me sussed, nearly. I am staking a claim - hence my eye-brow raising at the claim that this book is the first. But unlike a stern father I don’t seek to lay down the law and terrorise my children but keep a kindly, perhaps avuncular or god-parental, eye on what is going on in the playground. I’ve always had a ludic intent to my work.
So whether as parent, uncle or god-father I am engaging strongly in this review and have also provided the afterword for Power Played edited by Derek Silva and Liam Kennedy.
Millward et al are hopeful of the future of connections to be made between studies of sport and criminology. They kindly note my emphasis on mundane acts as well as spectacular or scandalous ones involving elites; for instance, they give an example of the banning of skateboards in Norway between 1978 and 1989. I agree their conclusion that ‘the relationship between ‘crime’ and ‘sport’ is so diffuse, contested and broad’ (p5). I would add that our relationship as people and criminologists is similarly diffuse, contested and broad.
My book took a critical criminological stance, even critiquing sports and theories I favoured but also attempted to set out how a variety of criminologies might be applied to sport. Millward et al dive right in so spend some of the introduction setting out some critical points.
Those critical points are:
1) there is a starting point in my work and that of others and
2) citing Francis (2012) they note ‘sport is and always will be harmful’ and
3) those harms include dead workers on Qatar’s World Cup stadia (which they take up in Chapter 7) and increased control and surveillance at sports mega-events (taken up in Chapter 5)
and 4) critical criminology has become diffuse and disputed. Sport makes a ‘novel entry point’ (p6).
Chapter 2 then provides further history of critical criminology and its scant engagement with sport.
Chapter 3 looks at white collar crime and crimes of the powerful in sport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
Using a Foucauldian lens, sports based interventions (SBIs) are examined in Chapter 4. They are found to mask social inequalities and control whilst providing isolated cases of ‘success’ (p9).
Critical Security Studies inform Chapter 5’s examination of sport mega-events but also of athlete’s bodies.
Drawing on ‘edgework’ Chapter 6 looks at mixed martial arts, bare-knuckle boxing and other extreme sports.
Chapter 7 focusses on the upcoming football Word Cup in Qatar and the social harms caused by it.
Chapter 8 sums up and offers a research agenda. I’ll check it against mine in (Hall and Scalia, 2019).
I’ll review a chapter at a time over the next few weeks.
