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

PURPOSE: 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. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: 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. FINDINGS: 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. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: 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.