Partnership working in sport-based interventions within custodial settings: politics, vulnerability and negotiation

Drawing from a study conducted in three Belgian prisons, this study aims to investigate multi-agency partnerships as a means to deliver sport-based interventions in prison which are designed to support prisoner health. Specifically, this study explores the complexity of the relationships between three groups of actors specific to these partnerships - internal justice actors, external delivery organisations and a separate organisation that was responsible for coordinating sports and cultural activities in each prison.

Adopting a qualitative approach, a total of 29 semi-structured interviews were conducted with various partnership stakeholders from the three groups of actors; 19 with internal justice actors, 7 with external organisations that were responsible for the delivery of the sport interventions and 3 with staff from the coordinating organisation.

Sport-based interventions in custodial contexts are not delivered in a neutral space, but one that is laden with political complexity and ingrained with misaligned aims and competing priorities. Partnerships unfold within a differentiated ecology of actors who are influenced by distinct institutional logics and moral orientations, where the behavioural regulation of prisoners is often prioritised over efforts to support prisoner health.

While studies have examined partnership operations within community-based interventions which use sport to address criminal justice outcomes, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate such partnerships within a custodial setting. Despite the widespread use of partnership approaches as a policy function, findings suggest that multi-agency collaboration in prison settings is shaped less by formal frameworks and more by relational dependency, asymmetrical power relations and moral negotiation.