"24 hour" recreation center proposal: DC Mayor Muriel Bowser

 WJLA-TV reports ("24-hour Rec Center in DC hopes to deter youth crime surge") that as part of a set of anti-violence initiatives, Mayor Bowser is putting more money into recreation centers, with the presumption of longer hours.

The story features a 24-hour event at Turkey Thicket, a recreation center in Ward 5, which is miles away from DC's most violent neighborhoods.  Although according to the article, the hope is to do this every Friday.

I suggested doing something like that, although not so ambitious, back in 2015:

-- "Crime falls 40% in neighborhoods with Summer Night Lights program," Los Angeles Times
-- "Summer Evening Recreation Program at Muskegon High School gets young people off the streets," Muskegon Chronicle
-- Parks After Dark: Preventing Violence While Promoting Healthy, Active Living report, LA County Department of Parks and Recreation
--The Real Deal: The Evolution of Seattle, Washington’s At-Risk Youth Program
-- "Rethinking Sports-Based Community Crime Prevention: A Preliminary Analysis of the Relationship Between Midnight Basketball and Urban Crime Rates," Journal of Sport and Social Issues

Los Angeles has offered a "Summer Night Lights" program for a number of years, aimed at reducing neighborhood and youth violence.

LA Summer Night Lights program, infographic, 2018 results.

FWIW, over the years, I've suggested that at least in the summer, recreation centers stay open til midnight ("Summer hours for parks, libraries, pools, and recreation centers") and I wondered why DC starts closing outdoor pools in August, when hot weather often continues into the beginning of October.

And some neighborhood schools in some places, not DC, open their libraries in the summer.

Plus, even before I blogged (so before 2005), I suggested that DC's central library downtown be open til midnight.  Later I learned that in Montgomery County's conurbations (Silver Spring, Bethesda, Rockville, etc.), during the summer libraries are open til 9 pm Friday and Saturday nights.  Montreal's main library is open til 10 pm many nights of the week.

Too often, schedules for public facing civic assets--schools, libraries, parks, recreation centers--are not congruent with public needs, but focused on the convenience for the agencies running the facilities.

Harvesting best practice: not.  I am always left nonplussed about how DC doesn't seem to do much in the way of harvesting and evaluating best practice before developing programs of its own.  Which is probably why such programs tend to be ineffective and poorly thought out.

Social infrastructure.  The ideas here have to do with providing more social infrastructure to distressed communities, not less.

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

How to do it.  Obviously, you don't want hours of operation to compete with school.  At the very least recreation centers should be open til 10pm, and maybe 2 am or 24/hours on weekends and during school breaks including summer.  There should be age restrictions based on school status--kids in school shouldn't be at a recreation center at 3 am on a school night.

But you want recreation and other activities to be made available to older youths, beyond school age, to provide alternatives too.