Football Spectatorship: Are the Home Office Statistics a Reliable Indicator for Measuring Football-Related Violence and Disorder?

The behaviour of football spectators has received significant attention in areas of psychology, criminology and law, yet there is no singular piece of research that examines the reliability of the evidence used to monitor spectator behaviour. Issues regarding football-related violence and disorder still exist, nevertheless, the extent remains unclear due to the unreliability of the data used to monitor this behaviour. This article examines the Home Office statistics that monitor football-related arrests and the number of Football Banning Orders served each football season. Analysing the statistics has illustrated that there are significant issues with the reliability of the dataset and should not be used without better contextualisation as the basis for policing, prosecution and legislative strategies. The article further examines the methodological underpinning of the data by investigating the source through the use of Freedom of Information requests. The article recommends that a more robust, standardised system for logging the data is needed to be a reliable indicator of the scale of football violence and disorder.