I am doing a formal essay at school about Violence towards officials and Laws protecting them from it. If you could help me in any way with weblinks, documents, statistics or anything it would be much appreciated! Also, Does anybody know if there are any laws in place in Canada protecting the officials? ( I am from Canada and any Canadian info would help too!)

Thank you in advance :)
Kristal

Kristal -

Here is an excellent source - report done on this topichttp://www.naso.org/rprt1.htm

Fourteen states now have specific laws protecting sports officials, and another 14 states are preparing similar rules to enforce spectator conduct.

Some youth leagues now require parents to sign "good-behavior" contracts if they are to attend events. But organizations representing officials are pushing for more legislative protections. What might have been a wrist-slapping misdemeanor is now serious stuff, with violators of new laws facing as many as three years in jail and stiff fines. Seems it's either that or players, coaches and fans will be left to officiate their own darn games.

Kristal, welcome to the forum. Try this link to the National Association of Sports Officials.. Look on the left, and click on "Special Reports" and "Government Relations". There should be quite a bit of information in there to help you out. For strictly Canadian refereces, I imagine that you can try using Google.ca- that should find something for you.

http://www.naso.org

As far as I know there are no such laws in Canada, just out of curiosity, where abouts in Canada are you??

Canada has laws? Wow, I did not know that.

Yes Canada does have laws...ha ha! I am from Sudbury, Ontario. About 4 hrs North of Toronto. :)

I'm from Hamilton, and by the looks of that site I posted earlier, most of the altercations seem to happen down here;)

Well, we are quite feistier here in Canada... It must be the hockey blood in us!