Research illustrates that participation in physical activity is advantageous to overall health. Incarcerated populations are one subset that would benefit most from consistent engagement in physical activity, yet little is known about programs created to fulfill this need. The purpose of this study was to determine activity levels and social behaviors of incarcerated adolescent males during a structured sport-leadership program. Participants were 23 incarcerated males. The System for Observing Children's Activity and Relationships during Play was employed to evaluate activity and social behaviors. A major finding of this study demonstrated that incarcerated youth engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity for a large portion of the sport-leadership programming time (50.6%). In this study, prosocial (11.7%) and antisocial (7.1%) interactions mirrored those observed in residential summer camps, on playgrounds, and during recess.
Keywords: incarcerated youth; juvenile detention centers; physical activity; systematic observation.