Blog | NFL player allegedly breaks wife's nose after she refuses sex. Are NFL players more violent?
Another day, another headline being made by a player in the National Football League.
This time it is a running back for the Arizona Cardinals, a former Georgia Tech standout.
The details of the alleged attack by the police have been released, and they are not pretty:
"Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer head-butted his wife and broke her nose after she bit his lip to stop his sexual advances, and he punched her in the face the next day, according to a police report made public Thursday."
Do all of the recent headlines coming out of the NFL for allegations of domestic violence and child abuse prove that the average NFL player is more violent than non-professional football-playing American men?
The research says no. The rate of violent arrests in the NFL is only a fraction of that found among similarly-aged men in the U.S., according to an analysis done by FiveThirtyEight.com. So that’s good, right? Yes, but it is only half the story.
When compared to men in the same socioeconomic bracket, the rate is much higher:
Note that murder scores relatively high, but the raw numbers are extremely low (there are two in the database, though a third case — domestic in nature — resulted in suicide ). But there are 83 domestic violence arrests, making it by far the NFL’s worst category — with a relative arrest rate of 55.4 percent.
Although this is still lower than the national average, it’s extremely high relative to expectations. That 55.4 percent is more than four times worse than the league’s arrest rate for all offenses (13 percent), and domestic violence accounts for 48 percent of arrests for violent crimes among NFL players, compared to our estimated 21 percent nationally.
Moreover, relative to the income level (top 1 percent) and poverty rate (0 percent) of NFL players, the domestic violence arrest rate is downright extraordinary. According to a 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics Report covering 1993 to 1998, the domestic victimization rate for women in households with income greater than $75,000 (3.3 per 100,000) was about 39 percent of the overall rate (8.4 per 100,000), and less than 20 percent of the rate for women ages 20 to 34. That report doesn’t include cross-tabs, and it’s a little out of date (more current data is harder to find because more recent BJS reports on the issue do not include income breakdowns), but that sub-20 percent relative victimization among high-income households is consistent with the NFL’s 13 percent relative arrest rate overall (arrest disparities between income levels are probably even greater than victimization rates).
Indeed, perhaps the question of how the NFL should “police” its players is the wrong analogy entirely. This situation may be more akin to tort law than criminal law: If the NFL is capable of reducing any harm its players are causing — whether through harsher suspensions or other policies targeting behavior — it may have a legal (or at least moral) duty to do so.
I still fully believe that when used properly, football can be used to help curb violence. As I wrote a few weeks ago:
That’s why I’ve spent the past several years trying to come up with just the right words to walk my son through the looking glass that is violence in society, one in which it is celebrated in summer blockbuster movies and on the football field, but gets him in deep trouble when he fights his 10-year-old sister.
He is bigger and stronger but she often starts the disputes.
I told him that even though I knew that was true, he never had the right to hit her back.
He has told me that’s unfair.
I agreed, that it was unfair, but so is his size and strength advantage, that the more privilege one possesses in a given circumstance, the more responsibility and control is required.
Then I told him again – that he never has the right to hit his sister – and that the principles of football, when applied properly, can become an effective anti-domestic violence tool because the game emphasizes respect and discipline and knowing when and how to absorb the physical aggression of others – and controlling your own – in pursuit of a bigger goal, a more worthy purpose, instead of blindly lashing out just because you can.
That’s the message football coaches and players should be sending every chance they get, but for some reason they take a pass on the opportunity to teach and instead have allowed the image of a violent game played by sometimes out-of-control violent men take hold.
This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Blog | NFL player allegedly breaks wife's nose after she refuses sex. Are NFL players more violent?."