Midnight basketball

Midnight basketball is an initiative which developed in the 1990s 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. Young people aged from 14 to 29, mostly men of various minority groups, could go and play basketball during the peak crime hours of 22:00 to 02:00, immediately, thereafter, attending informative programs that gave them helpful skills for everyday life. It was a way for young men to form a sense of community, get out of a dangerous environment, and give them a sense of hope for the future. Midnight basketball helped decrease crime in the neighbourhoods where it was run, and it was a positive outlet for many young men. It helped many stay out of trouble and off the streets. By 2019, various cities in the United States brought back the program.

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, were living in poverty and could not always afford to do something. He opened Glenarden Recreation Center, funded by both private donations and public funds. They ran during those specific hours, where young men could come and play basketball. It was run by volunteers and supervised by officers to make sure everything was alright. Even the officers complimented how well the programs were working and what a benefit it was to the community. 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. It was argued that race was the key to midnight basketball's importance. The influence of the media associating crimes with African Americans actually made crime seem more dangerous, and there was more want for anti crime programs.

The plan was widely criticized 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 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. It helped many young men who went back to school, and got jobs, all while staying off the streets.

By 2019, various cities in the United States had brought back their midnight basketball programs.