September 2015 - Parks & Recreation - 84

NRPA Update

Structured Recreation Programming
Can Help Reduce Juvenile Crime
By David Kurtz

or the past several decades, one of the most troubling issues facing cities
and towns throughout the country is the prevalence of juvenile crime.
Affecting rural, urban and suburban communities, this problem is not
unique to a specific geographic region. Criminal activity and delinquency among youth occurs (to varying degrees) across all ethnic and socioeconomic
groups. As parents, civic leaders, and park and recreation professionals, when confronted with such a pervasive matter, we must seek ways to provide safe, structured
programs that help youth fill unsupervised time with positive activities.
The primary catalyst in the rise of
delinquency among minors is largely
attributable to major shifts in workforce demographics. Since the 1960s,
our country has experienced an almost
50 percent increase in the labor force
participation rate of women. Today,
almost 76 percent of women with
school-age children are working, either in homes of two-parent earners or

Perceptions of
Local Recreation
and Parks:
2015 Study
NRPA and Penn State University
are putting the final touches on an
update to a 1992 nationwide study to
determine the current use, opinions
and benefits of local parks and recreation. The study not only provides
a picture of the current perceptions
surrounding the field, but also examines how those perceptions have
evolved over 23 years. Preliminary
results from the study will be shared
from 2:45 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday,
September 17, during the " Americans'
Use and Perceptions of Local Park and
Recreation Services - Findings from
a National Study " session at the 2015
NRPA Annual Conference. A final
report will be ready in early 2016.

82 Parks & Recreation

homes of single-parent earners. While
this change to the U.S. workforce has
been positive, we have largely been unable to mitigate ancillary impacts to
working families, including an increase
in unsupervised time for youths. This
becomes apparent when considering
that the majority of juvenile crime occurs predominantly during the week
- as opposed to on the weekend - in
the hours between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. In
the unsupervised time between when
school ends and parents return from
work, children are far more likely to
commit crime, engage in risky behaviors or be victims of crime.
As recreation providers, what is our
role in addressing the costs, both social
and economic, of juvenile crime? Studies have shown that the most essential
requisite for programs to reduce delinquency is that they provide structured,
supervised activities to youth. One
study on the impact of structure in after-school programs found that during
unstructured time problem behaviors
increased. Research has suggested that
facilities, particularly recreation centers, with poorly, or no, structured activities, attract youth with social problems and that frequent participation
at the centers is linked to high rates of
juvenile delinquency. Therefore, recre-

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ation centers that do not provide access
to programs focused on active participation can serve as conveners for youth
to commit delinquent acts.
Studies on active, structured recreation focused on youth have shown
strong relationships to positive outcomes. Youths who participate in extracurricular activities are more likely than
non-participants to have higher self-esteem, greater academic achievement
and lower incidences of delinquency.
Furthermore, at-risk youths have been
found to especially benefit from guided
recreation programming. Low-income,
at-risk youth experience improved test
scores in both reading and math after
they begin participation in after-school
programs. Data has also shown that students who reported spending no time
in afterschool extracurricular activities
were 57 percent more likely to drop out
of high school, 49 percent more likely
to use drugs and 27 percent more likely
to have been arrested than students who
spend as much as four hours in structured activities.
Park and recreation agencies have
the ability to provide the programs that
can address the root causes of juvenile
crime. Because the types of leisure in
which youth participate have profound
impacts on social development, active
and adult-supervised recreation programming available through park agencies are positioned perfectly to equip
youth with the tools that develop positive social and cognitive skills, self-confidence and a sense of community.
David Kurtz is NRPA's former Research
Specialist.

September 2015 - Parks & Recreation

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