Zawaya

Eradicating sports violence through prevention, sanctions, and penal solutions

By: Kalthoum Benalgia

Football violence is an increasingly worrying phenomenon of modern times that vitiates and distorts the very meaning of this sport.

Fan violence affects virtually every country in the world. Brawls, stadium invasions, insults and provocation have become quasi-repetitive acts that require solutions.

The enormous damages caused, such as fan injuries, property damages, and even deaths, have led officials to take measures aiming at eradicating violence caused by passionate and rampaging fans.

Sociologists, psychologists, and security officials all agree on the fact that a football stadium is an escape valve that often serves as an outlet for expressing different repressions felt by a range of fans.

Passion often goes beyond the socially permitted boundaries to result in intolerable scenes of violence.

Several types of solutions have been proposed to tackle this phenomenon. First comes prevention, then sports sanctions and finally criminal penalties.

Prevention is a civic and civilized measure applied to avoid a possible crackdown. It essentially consists of carrying out campaigns against violence in stadiums and public spaces through media outlets.

The creation of supporters’ committees to oversee the audience is also included in the context of prevention, with an important reservation, however. Oftentimes, these supporters’ associations are encouraged by clubs because they mobilize the sports audience in every game. This relationship with the supporters’ associations allows the groups of supporters to take part in the clubs’ activities. While they are certainly not involved by any legal charge and do not make any decisions concerning the club, they often become pressure groups and influence the clubs. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in Tunisia where the public is often the cause behind the resignation of coaches.

The scale of violence has led officials to resort to sports sanctions. Tunisia is a typical example in this regard, as the country imposes fines on clubs whenever their public is guilty of disorder.

Given the inadequacy of this solution, Tunisian authorities have included increased fines for repeat offenders in the statutes of the Tunisian Football Federation (FTF), and have even plans to apply more radical solutions such as subtracting one or two points from the standings of the club whose public has committed acts of violence.

This solution has not been unanimously accepted by clubs.

This decision, which was adopted on October 2, 2009 at the General Assembly of the FTF, was not unanimous, since the clubs have claimed that they should not be responsible for acts committed by a handful of rampaging fans nor be punished for that.

As for penal solutions, they alternate prevention with suppression, but require the use of large means that cannot be afforded by all States.

To deal with hooliganism, European countries were the first to introduce systematic inspections of supporters at the stadiums’ entrance. Many honest fans have found this procedure to be humiliating at the outset, but accepted it afterwards due to the rampant insecurity in sports arenas.

Another measure was to identify, through video cameras installed in stadiums, the most violent fans in order to ban them from the stadiums for a definite period of time.

The European police, in collaboration with clubs, has even created databases to identify supporters troublemakers.

Is that enough though?

Although necessary, the means used to come to grips with violence in stadiums have failed to eradicate this phenomenon.

Further efforts are still needed, especially from the media that should avoid hot and provocative comments that are often taken seriously by fans.

As a matter of fact, the media have an important role to play by helping make sports debates less passionate and presenting them in a strict sports’ frame, so that sports will not be used as an excuse to rekindle violence, regionalism and racism.