Youth Justice Sport Fund

The Youth Justice Sport Fund was established to use sport as a powerful tool to engage at-risk young people, diverting them from crime and antisocial behaviour. Launched in December 2022, the programme allocated £5 million across 220 trusted community organisations nationwide. Managed by StreetGames, with support from the Alliance of Sport in Criminal Justice and the Sport for Development Coalition, the fund was the first of its kind delivered by the Ministry of Justice.

Sport was increasingly recognised as having a role in prevention and early intervention work with children at risk of, or already involved in, offending behaviour. The two key goals for the funding were to:

• Support vulnerable young people, aged 10-17, at-risk of involvement in crime, anti-social behaviour and serious violence—understood as those in the secondary tier of need—through involvement in local sporting activities
• Through capacity building, increase the capability of sport sector delivery organisations to work effectively with their local criminal justice partners, including Youth Justice Services, Police and Police Crime Commissioners (PCC)/Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) structures. This work focused on building sustainable relationships for the medium to longer term to facilitate potential future access to the new ‘Turnaround’ programme and other funding.

The programme successfully engaged over 7,800 young people, with 82% of them coming from 40% most deprived areas, providing them with structured sports activities and additional personal development opportunities.

77 of the 220 participating organisations had an annual turnover of less than £100,000 and 63% of the hours delivered by participating organisations were dedicated to mentoring and other ‘sport plus’ activities that help delivery staff build a strong rapport with young people and accelerate their personal development.