Moves Different: boxing pilot aims to prove sport's role in reducing youth violence

A national boxing pilot programme in England and Wales, supported by the Youth Endowment Fund and England Boxing, seeks to evaluate whether structured sports activities like boxing can help lower the risk of crime and serious violence among teenagers, amid declining youth services and rising social pressures.

At Dagenham Amateur Boxing Club, coach Dan O’Sullivan has spent years seeing what a structured gym can do for young people who might otherwise be drifting. Now his work is part of a broader national test: Moves Different, a boxing pilot backed by the Youth Endowment Fund and delivered by England Boxing, is tracking 1,500 people aged 13 to 18 across 40 clubs in England and Wales to see whether the sport can help reduce the risks linked to crime and serious violence.

The programme is built around a simple idea that many coaches have long argued in practice: regular training, trusted adults and clear expectations can give teenagers a reason to turn up and keep turning up. England Boxing says the initiative offers supervised sessions designed to build discipline, respect and resilience, while the Youth Endowment Fund is supporting an independent evaluation to examine whether that support can also shift behaviour and lower exposure to offending.

O’Sullivan is one of the volunteers already living that theory on the ground. He has kept the Dagenham club going through difficult years, including a period when the old premises were no longer usable and the club faced the prospect of losing its home. With help from the council, it eventually secured a permanent base above Heathway Shopping Centre, preserving a space that local politicians and coaches say has become far more than a sports venue.

In Brixton, coach Malik Owusu says the appeal is just as much about consistency as combat sports. He told Big Issue that many young people lack routine and discipline, and that boxing can supply both. One of his fighters, 17-year-old Tamaisha, said the sessions have given her something constructive to focus on and a route towards becoming an accredited competition boxer. England Boxing says the programme is being delivered over six months in this pilot phase, with the research designed to test how the model works in real settings.

The study comes at a time when youth services have been shrinking. Big Issue reported that spending on such provision across England and Wales has fallen sharply over the past decade, while the Youth Endowment Fund has also found that many teenagers have encountered violence on social media. Ciaran Thapar, the fund’s director of youth engagement, argues that some of the young people most at risk are dealing with complex pressures, including family imprisonment, violence at home and strained relationships with police. He says those experiences can push some towards carrying knives or taking matters into their own hands.

Margaret Mullane, the Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, says clubs like O’Sullivan’s should be seen as part of a wider prevention network rather than as a luxury add-on. She described local boxing clubs as vital community anchors and welcomed the national evaluation, saying it could help projects reach more young people who need structure, role models and somewhere to go after school. The case for testing the model is becoming more data-driven too: England Boxing and its partners point to a randomised design, with some eligible young people offered boxing and others a free gym membership, in an effort to measure the programme’s effect more rigorously.

For O’Sullivan, the proof remains visible in the gym itself. He says the club has already helped people with difficult backgrounds go on to box for England and, in some cases, reach the Olympics. The hope now is that a programme long championed by coaches will finally produce the evidence to match the stories they have been telling for years.