Midnight basketball

Midnight basketball was a 1990s initiative to curb inner-city crime in the United States by keeping urban youth off the streets and engaging them with alternatives to drugs and crime. It was founded by G. Van Standifer in the late 1980s.

History

Crime In the 1980's to 1990's

Crime began to rise rapidly in the 1980’s and 1990’s. There were many minorities that were discriminated against, including Irish, Greek and African Americans, and many turned to crime. Crime became an organized system when groups began to form their own gangs. African Americans were especially affected by this because they were the lowest of the socioeconomic status, and were motivated by discrimination and poverty. Most African-Americans were often violent towards their own, and racism was a big contribution to this. It was also concerning that there had been a lot crimes being caused teens. Many came from single parent families and didn’t have a male figure in their lives. Many committed crimes for money, power, and objects that they couldn’t afford, known as ‘crimes of fashion’. It became such a big deal, that sometimes minors were sometimes tried as adults because they had to show teenagers that their actions had consequences.

The Beginning of Midnight Basketball

Midnight basketball began in Glenarden, Maryland in 1986, when crack cocaine first came to Washington. The program was started when Van Standifer noticed that the crime rates were incredibly high especially during the hours of 10 pm and 2 am. He observed that young men had nothing to do, as many did not have jobs and many were living in poverty and could not always afford to do something. He opened Glenarden Recreation Centre, funded by both private donations and public funds. They ran during those specific hours, where young men could come and play basketball. Afterwards, they would have to attend workshops that informed them about different necessities for living. It was later added to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994and was signed by President Bill Clinton.

The Crime Bill

In 1994, Bill Clinton pushed for an anti-crime bill that would lead to 100,000 more police officers as well as a number of programs intended to "deter crime where it starts" by providing "community activities like midnight basketball." At the time of its inception, despite being racially coded, it was a relatively unknown and uncontroversial piece of policy innovation. However, once President Clinton's anti-crime bill was being debated about five years after the creation of Midnight Basketball, it became a highly contentious part of the bill. This was striking because the initiative only made up $50 million of the original $33 billion bill. Midnight Basketball's initiative was already racially coded, so when lawmakers were discussing whether it was a positive or negative part of this massive bill, it was part of a covert racial dialogue.

Reception

The plan was widely lampooned by conservatives such as House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, who cited midnight basketball as an ineffective and wasteful use of federal funds. Some, such as Rush Limbaugh, even called the proposal racist, given the largely African American populations targeted by the program. Midnight basketball was not a proposal unique to the Democrats as it was one of George H. W. Bush's "Thousand points of light." It was also argued that violence portrayed in the media could influence young African American men and actually raise the crime rate, so there was there was some action taken to try to reduce the crime and violence shown to the younger generation. When Midnight Basketball was discussed in the media in relation to the anti-crime bill, 98.2 percent of the time it was being shown negatively was when it was coming from an identifiable conservative-Republican. On the other hand, when a liberal-Democratic source discussed it, it was shown in a positive light 97.9 percent of the time. Midnight Basketball became the symbol of the overall anti-crime bill struggle. Specifically, it allowed racial issues to be explicitly talked about, and because Midnight Basketball was almost completely for crime prevention in minorities, it helped make young African-American men the face of crime.

Effectiveness

Empirically, a 2006 study of the 1990-1994 period during which rates of most crimes in the United States peaked, and when urban midnight basketball programs were initiated as a crime-prevention strategy, found that—while confounding factors were likely involved—property crime rates fell more rapidly in cities that were early adopters of the original midnight basketball model than in other American cities in the same period.

Further reading

• Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy by Douglas Hartmann, 2016, University of Chicago Press

See also

• Midnight league