Policing the Void

Recreation, Social Inclusion and the Baltimore Police Athletic League

Bibliographic Data

ID13054929
AuthorsJacob J Bustad (0000-0001-8938-6138, Towson University, corresponding author), David L Andrews (0000-0002-9056-1471, University of Maryland, College Park)
Year2017
Volume5
Issue2
Pages241-249
Publication date2017-06-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Inclusion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2183-2803 • E-ISSN: 2183-2803
PublisherCogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT)
DOI10.17645/si.v5i2.904
OpenAlexW2725982850
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited17

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)

Crime prevention · Criminology · Economic growth · Economics · Framing (construction · League · Political science · Politics · Recreation · Sociology · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · Law · Public Administration · Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts