Midnight basketball may not have been invented in Chicago, but the City of Big Shoulders—home of Michael Jordan and the Bulls—is where it first came to national prominence. And it’s also where Douglas Hartmann first began to think seriously about the audacious notion that organizing young men to run around in the wee hours of the night—all trying to throw a leather ball through a metal hoop—could constitute meaningful social policy. Organized in the 1980s and ’90s by dozens of American cities, late-night basketball leagues were designed for social intervention, risk reduction, and crime prevention targeted at African American youth and young men. In Midnight Basketball, Hartmann traces the history of the program and the policy transformations of the period, while exploring the racial ideologies, cultural tensions, and institutional realities that shaped the entire field of sports-based social policy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book also brings to life the actual, on-the-ground practices of midnight basketball programs and the young men that the programs intended to serve. In the process, Midnight Basketball offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of the intricate ways sports, race, and risk intersect and interact in urban America.

Sport-based intervention programs designed to divert poor minority youth from gangs and crime got their start with the Midnight Basketball initiatives of the late 1980s. Hartmann explains the mystery of why a basketball- based program became popular as a solution to problems of crime and poverty in dozens of American cities. In part, then, this book is a history, but also a cultural analysis to explain the prominence of these programs at first (and then so controversial later on), and how they were expanded upon in the years that followed. In fact, it was in Chicagohome of Michael Jordan and the Bullsthat Midnight Basketball first achieved prominence. Under the direction of former Congressman Jack Kemp and the Chicago Housing Authority, two leagues were organized, in Rockwell Gardens and the Henry Horner Homes. To understand why the program caught on, Hartmann explores the policy transformations of the period (such as the new penology and neoliberal paternalism), and, at length, he gets into the cultural tensions and institutional realities that shaped this program and the entire field of sport-based social policy. In the end, Midnight Basketball, Race, and Neoliberal Social Policy provides a one-of-a-kind view of the culture of sport and race in America, and neoliberal policy broadly conceived."

Most interventions for at-risk youth are group based. Yet, research indicates that young people often learn to become deviant by interacting with deviant peers. In this important volume, leading intervention and prevention experts from psychology, education, criminology, and related fields analyze how, and to what extent, programs that aggregate deviant youth actually promote problem behavior. A wealth of evidence is reviewed on deviant peer influences in such settings as therapy groups, alternative schools, boot camps, group homes, and juvenile justice facilities. Specific suggestions are offered for improving existing services, and promising alternative approaches are explored.

African American Community Practice Models shows you what you can "see" and "learn" when people of African American descent are put in the center of community analysis and change. This text celebrates African American experiences and challenges you to understand the black experience from the inside out rather than from the outside in. The contributors provide excellent historical and current case studies of leaders and programs that provide you with models for program and community development in African American communities today. For the contemporary social worker, these historical comparisons reveal what strategies have been needed in African American communities in the past because of political and social climates. The studies of current successful programs instruct those in community-based African American programs, general service networks, and students on how to continue to better serve the black community.The contributing authors use a new lens for understanding social welfare history and social service development. They encourage social workers to explore new model-building and to pursue new knowledge about African Americans in the social work classroom. In addition to tracing the history of community development, African American Community Practice Models specifically: presents the black community from a position of strength and leadership documents leadership in the black community to ground national advocacy organizations traces women's leadership in community development documents the unrecognized history of African Americans in the development of the Settlement Movement highlights examples of current self-help programs sponsored by African American communities to change negative behavior patterns documents the impact of racism on service delivery and the response to develop community support programs presents a challenge to expand community development for both internal and external advocacyProfessors of the core courses in social work--HBSE, research, policy, and practice--and of specialized courses in community practice, macropractice, and African Americans would benefit from teaching from African American Community Practice Models. Students and faculty in these and other study areas concerned with this community will get community tactics and program development ideas from this book that connect with African American people. The importance of community development from within the African American community, historical and current methods of dealing with the ongoing impact of racism and economic disadvantage, the responsibility of professionals and community leaders to build empowerment strategies within African American communities, and the need to advocate for rights and opportunities in larger society for black Americans are key issues addressed throughout the book, which begins to fill the void of positive presentations of black community development.

The bustle of the crowd is waning and the zoo is quieting for the night. The polar bear picks up the ball and dribbles onto the court; the nightly game begins. A frog jumps up to play one-on-one and then a penguin waddles in to join the team. Count along as the game grows with the addition of each new animal and the field of players builds to ten. Three zebras serve as referees and keep the clock, because this game must be over before the zookeeper makes her rounds.

Some vols. include supplemental journals of "such proceedings of the sessions, as, during the time they were depending, were ordered to be kept secret, and respecting which the injunction of secrecy was afterwards taken off by the order of the House."