Sport and Crime (Frontiers of Sport)

This is the first book to explore fully the connections between sport studies and criminology, opening up critical new frontiers in the study of sport and crime.

Rooted firmly in established critical criminological traditions, the book also employs insights from emerging theoretical frameworks such as cultural criminology, governmentality theory and critical security studies to make better sense of a range of transnational and contemporary cases, events and trends that reveal, in different ways, the crimes and harms that are present in sport. Empirically grounded, including case studies of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, it explores emerging themes in contemporary sport, including but not limited to corruption, doping, youth crime, terrorism, violence and transgression, and human rights abuses. Sport and Crime consciously pushes the boundaries of what might be considered the critical criminology of sport.

This is an essential text for any course on sport and crime, and invaluable reading for any student or researcher with an interest in the sociology of sport, sport development, sport policy, the politics of sport, critical criminology, or socio-legal studies.

Peter Millward is Professor of Contemporary Sociology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His main research interests are in the areas of sport, social movements, cultural relational sociology and, here, critical approaches to understanding crime, criminality and harm. He has undertaken several research projects funded by the UKRI and European Commission. He is joint editor of the Routledge book series, Critical Research in Football and serves on the editorial board of a number of internationally leading journals, including Sociology.

Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics with Sociology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Broadly, his main research areas are within the social and political study of sport and his research on sport mega-events, security, risk and fandom has been published in journals such as the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Journal of Consumer Culture, Leisure Studies and Journal of Sport and Social Issues. He has also authored Sport Mega-Events, Security and Covid-19: Securing the Football World (Routledge, 2022).

Jonathan Sly is Lecturer in Applied Criminology at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. His research interests focus on contemporary manifestations of aggressive masculinity. This includes sports-related violence and associated subcultures globally, subjective inter-personal violence and street culture in late-modern Britain, and the links between transgressive practices and social class in the contemporary era. He also has a broader academic interest in the social scientific analysis of crime and deviance, contemporary illicit substance markets and consumer culture, sport management and sports fandom, reflexive and biographical qualitative research methodologies, and critical debates and new directions in criminological theory.