Ray Rice Criminology

If anything defines the culture of the United States, it is American Football. This spectator sport is extremely popular and the NFL has recently been making a name for itself in terms of players of a different race, sexual orientation, and class. But there is a particular dark side that the NFL tries to sweep under the rug. NFL players are rarely punished for what they do outside the stadium, unless the incident is widely publicized or circulated. Recently, a video surfaced of Ray Rice and Janay Palmer surfaced showing the NFL star dragging his fianceé from a Revel Casino elevator. However, the outrage became sudden when a new video appeared showing the altercation and violence between Ray Rice and Janay Palmer. Utilizing criminal theory and
logic, this paper will explain the complex situation of the domestic violence incident involving Ray Rice and why the outrage has been so sudden since the onslaught of the second video. Criminal theories are important in the application of crimes and why crime is committed and so it is interesting for a theory to be applied to a recent topic that has spiraled out of control.
Part A
The two criminology schools of thought in explaining why violent crimes such as the domestic violence incident with Ray Rice occur are the classical school and positivist schools of criminology. These schools were developed in an attempt better explain why crime is committed and promoting the idea of rational punishments/treatments (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 1995). Essentially, long before the classical and positivists schools were established popular philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, and Jean Jacques-Rousseau came up with ideas on how to act rationally when concerning punishment and the causes of crime. During the middle ages, religion was highly
praised and religious leaders wielded large amounts of power. Many determined that criminals were full of sin and therefore had to undergo significantly painful torture to rid of the sin of the individual, justifying the act in the name of God (Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, 2010). The classical school explains that crime is related to the individual involving rationality and/or intelligence and that people have free will to determine whether the action will benefit the offender. On the other hand the positivist school deals with biological and psychological perspectives and how those influence criminality within an individual (Bernard et al., 2010). While the schools contributed different ideas to explaining crime, the classical and positivist schools of criminology brought in their own ideas and theories that were influential in developing modern topic of criminology. For example, the classical school of criminology helped separate punishments from the individual and instead connecting the punishment to the crime committed (Lilly et al., 1995). However, they both explain the causes of violent crime such as domestic violence differently.
Cesare Beccaria was the primary founder of what came to be known as classical criminology, in the 18th century Italy (Bernard et al., 2010).
Beccaria proposed that people weigh the costs and benefits to see if the crime is worth committing. Now to prevent crime from occurring he proposed that through the act of punishment, potential criminals will realize that the costs outweigh the benefits and therefore not worth it. This idea became very popular as scholars discovered his texts. A part of classical theory, rational choice theory can be used in explaining that all people are able to commit a crime if the right opportunity arises (Bernard et al.,
2010).
According to Vold’s Theoretical Criminology, rational choice theory is explained as when people who commit crime without the thought of long term consequences or other people. If a large-scale riot broke out in an urban area and with the police busy handling the crowd the potential offender could utilize a cost benefit analysis to determine whether it is worth it. The property or business will be left unguarded and people will take advantage of that opportunity (Bernard et al., 2010). During the incident both Ray Rice and Janay Palmer were both intoxicated and when people get drunk there is a greater likelihood that a fight will break out and judgment becomes severely limited. In Richard Wortley’s Situational precipitators of crime, Wortley explains that anything can happen and so expressive violence is, “…an impulsive reaction to events carried out in the heat of the moment” (Wortley & Mazerolle, 2008, p. 60). When Janay Palmer was involved in the altercation with Ray Rice he knocked her out onto the railing of the elevator and was left unconscious. Ray Rice reacted to the behavior of his fianceé while exploiting his strength and talent as a football player and knocks her out, there is the opportunity. Rational choice theory is able to explain this kind of violent behavior because people have free will in making a decision as the opportunity arose.