“…Increasingly, youth justice and compulsory care systems have taken interest in sport-based interventions as an innovative way to engage with and facilitate pro-social development for placed youth (see Meek 2014; Morgan et al 2019). Recent research suggests numerous benefits for educational sport in youth justice contexts, including crime reduction, pro-social identity formation, the development of self-confidence and socio-emotional skills, improvement in mental and physical health, and, more generally, optimism and hope for the future (Meek 2014; Meek and Lewis 2014; Parker, Meek, and Lewis 2014; Roe, Hugo, and Larsson 2019). However, while such benefits are attributed to socio-pedagogical processes of sport, rather than participation in itself (Meek 2014; Morgan et al 2019; Roe et al 2019), studies have paid little attention to pedagogies of sport in youth detention, that is, how sport is conceived, delivered, and experienced.…”