By Umar Muhammad Sports Strategist/Play Advocate USports Consulting, LLC

Focus Areas Brief Historical Context Basketball as a Cultural Practice The PIC’UP™ Your Life as a Transitional Platform State and Federal Support for New Initiatives

History The lack of tools, access and knowledge to make good decisions about free or leisure time use, encourages individuals to satisfy their need for excitement and adventure by engaging in low skill, little knowledge, and low resource activities. These activities tend to be of a deviant and criminal nature leading to conflict with the justice system.

Correctional Recreation Today Acquire new skills Rehabilitative effect Reflect minority participation choices

Basketball as a Cultural Practice Why is Basketball considered the “game of choice?” “To “practice” basketball is to make it a part of everyday life…

Basketball as a Cultural Practice “Basketball is simultaneously a vehicle for the inculcation of conventional cultural values and an opportunity to explore alternatives…the game is a mainstream cultural practice, an educational tool designed to create well-disciplined young men and women.”

What Can Basketball Do? Build Decision Making Skills Promote Social Inclusion Act as a Reentry Platform

Decision Making In basketball, decision making is the most pressing challenge. Group, real-time and improvised decision making. Practiced in most contemporary public and private work environments.

Social Inclusion Men are taught in many practices that life itself is competitive. Basketball is a movement experience. Basketball is an affirmative practice.

Reentry (Community of the Game) Basketball creates “communities of practice…” Bringing people together in activities that they love... Basketball and Social Capital

PIC’UP™ Your Life Positive Intervention and Coaching for Underserved Populations The essence of basketball is not the NBA or the NCAA tournament but the pickup game…

PIC’UP™ Your Life The pickup game in many ways mirrors the situation many ex- offenders face when released back into the free society. The PIC’UP™ Your Life program enhances a participants ability to engage their environment with new decision making and conflict resolution skills. GET OFF THE BENCH AND GET IN THE GAME!

Components of PIC’UP™ Pickup basketball practice and games Cognitive Behavioral Workshops Case Management Community Coaching Academy (Outreach Initiative)

Transitional Platforms Educational Services Faith-Based Services Vocational Services Cognitive Development Counseling and Treatment Substance Abuse PIC’UP™ Your Life

State and Federal Support for PIC’UP™ OTS-Office of Transition Services approved its Transition and Re-entry Model for Prisons and Community Corrections NC’s Serious & Violent Offender Reentry Initiative: Going Home

State and Federal Support for PIC’UP™ Section 101 of the Second Chance Act Section 211 of the Second Chance Act

Summary “The justice system must work to ensure that those clients who reach its doors through the inability to utilize free or leisure time in meaningful ways, leave with the tools required to achieve success in an environment in which they had previously found failure.” -Dr. Brenda J. Robertson Acadia University Leisure Education, 1997

Umar Muhammad, MS, CNM Sports Strategist/Play Advocate USports Consulting, LLC