Policing the Void: Recreation, Social Inclusion and the Baltimore Police Athletic League

Abstract

In this article, we explore the relationship between public recreation policy and planning and the transformation of urban governance in the context of the Police Athletic League centers in Baltimore, Maryland. In light of contemporary discussions of the role of youth programs for sport and physical activity within post-industrial cities, the origination, development, and eventual demise of Baltimore's network of Police Activity League centers is an instructive, if disheartening, saga. It illustrates the social and political rationales mobilized in justifying recreation policy and programming, the framing of sport and physical activity as preventative measures towards crime and juvenile delinquency, and the precarity of such initiatives given the efficiency-driven orthodoxies of neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism (Harvey, 1989). This analysis emphasizes how the PAL centers were designed to 'fill the void' left by a declining system of public recreation, thereby providing an example of a recreation program as part of the "social problems industry" (Pitter & Andrews 1997).

Rationalities of goodwill: on the promotion of philanthropy through sports-based interventions in Sweden

“…Parnell, Spracklen, & Millward, 2017) sharpening the conditions for sport provision, especially in distressed residential areas (e.g. Bustad & Andrews, 2017). Such a development has also been observed in Scandinavia (Agergaard, Michelsen la Cour, & Treumer Gregersen, 2015) and in Sweden (Ekholm, 2018).…”

A Model of Discipline: The Rule(s) of Midnight Football and the Production of Order in Subjects and Society

“…However, the concerns of segregation and inequalities and rationalities of discipline and control are in many respects symptomatic of broader policy developments taking place in an age of austerity, constituting an institutional premise for the provision of rights (Parnell et al, 2017). With its emphasis on discipline and control, the discourse and rationality explored align fairly well with the paradigm of hard neoliberalism (Hartmann, 2016) outlined in an American context (Bustad & Andrews, 2017) and recognized in a range of contemporary welfare states (Wacquant, 2009). Such paradigm, in turn, relates to and is intermeshed with an ongoing turn toward a politics of assimilationism with a focus on cultural homogeneity (Ålund et al, 2017), as well as more punitive agendas on (sub)urban disorder (Thapar-Björkert et al, 2019).…”

“…Emphasizing a critical point of view, sport for social development and change has been conceptualized rather to be about the ability of sport to normalize individual youth to function in a system of hierarchical conditions and institutionalized segregation (Bustad & Andrews, 2017; Hartmann & Kwauk, 2011). Accordingly, sports-based interventions imbue a certain hidden curriculum, utilized as a means to maintain social order, to define normality and thus limiting possibilities for social change (Hartmann & Kwauk, 2011).…”

“…Neoliberalization, in this sense and in relation to the utilization of sport for social objectives, has been described in relation to austerity policies (Collins & Haudenhuyse, 2015; Parnell et al, 2017), underpinning organization of welfare services through public–private partnerships to reduce public investments in social policy. In concomitance, this policy development and context have facilitated two distinct, yet associated, modes of governing, that is (on one hand), individual empowerment and development of competences for a competitive society, and (on the other hand) a hard neoliberalism based on control and punitive measures targeting the populations of deprived and distressed residential areas rather than causes of social problems (Bustad & Andrews, 2017).…”

Governing Homelessness through Running

“…More recently, sport and exercise have been appropriated as psychosocial vehicles for addressing marginalized, vulnerable, or 'atrisk' populations in urban contexts (e.g. Bustad and Andrews, 2017;Clift, 2014;Holt and Jones, 2008;Holt et al, 2013;Scherer et al, 2016;Spaaij, 2009Spaaij, , 2013. A catalyst for such initiatives was Midnight Basketball in the United States, which employed late-night basketball games as a means for addressing crime, drugs, and gang-related activity (Hartmann, 2001(Hartmann, , 2003.…”