ABSTRACT

Despite the incontrovertible benefits associated with sport and physical education in prisons, it would be at best naïve and at worst dangerous to assume that such activities will inevitably confer only positive outcomes or that physical activity can be utilised as the entirely positive activity which an uncritical review of the research literature might assume. With any sports-based intervention, but especially prison-based ones, just as an overall effect or impact can result from a whole range of factors, negative as well as positive outcomes can come about as a result of participation. Some of these will be explored here, starting with the most complex and controversial – the idea that promoting some activities may actually contribute to an increase in offending.