Crimes Many Professional Athletes Get Away with

Currently there are a lot of problems with how we deal with punishing athletes. Many of the athletes buy their way out of trouble. Essentially, athletes get nothing more than a slap on the wrist if they get into legal trouble. The NFL’s average arrest rate for its 3,000 or so players is 4 percent compared with 3 percent for the general population. This is much lower than the 10 percent rate for the equivalent population of men ages 20 to 34. The USA Today database states domestic violence accounts for 85 of the 713 arrests of NFL players since 2000. Student athletes represent 19% of sexual assault perpetrators and 35% of domestic violence perpetrators. Conviction rate of athletes is just 38%, compared to 80%. The reason so many athletes get away with their crimes is speculated to be from the money they make, providing a way to buy the problem away. Also their employers have millions that they can make out of them still so they also buy the problem away. Another reason is that the general population looks up to them so if there are accusations against them no one really believes them because people think there is possibility of that happening. There should be harder punishments for these athletes and we should have a way to prevent athletes getting away with their crimes. Many athletes get away with doping themselves to become a better player which is highly illegal. A few of football players get away with physical violence and just keep doing it because they can get away with it. A final thing that athletes get away with is sexual violence especially during their College/University careers, this is possible from the colleges and university turning their back on the cases.

Doping is a hot topic in sports today because many players want to be the best of the best so they use these drugs to improve their overall skill, therefore earning them more money which is the end goal. The majority of the athletes get a small suspension for this crime and have to prove they aren’t using anymore. The odd case is where they lose their career. Armstrong built an empire on his success in the cycling world but all of that got destroyed when the American cyclist admitted to using enhancing drugs. Armstrong won the Tour de France seven straight times starting in 1999 and ending in 2005 and he also took home a bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Armstrong had been subjected to countless accusations about doping but he strongly denied any use of the enhancing drugs during his career. After years of denials, the cyclist admitted in a now-infamous interview in January 2013 that he had used enhancing drugs. Armstrong lost $75 million in endorsements following the interview. He never served any time for using drugs to cheat his way to the top. This was not a hard enough punishment for this case because he had made so much money from winning these races and then only lost endorsements. He should have served some time because he took all this money without and remorse for the fact he cheated for that money.

Physical violence is another crime many professional athletes get away with. They either end up buy it away or their employers need them to make money for them still so they use everything in their power to get rid of the problem, from bribing to getting the best lawyers for the athlete. An example of this is when Ray Rice was caught beating his wife in an elevator. Rice was caught by a security camera dragging his unconscious fiancée out of the elevator in an Atlantic City Casino after the supposed incident. The incident became a massive debate after celebrity news website TMZ released a video of the horrifying encounter. He was fined $250 000 and was suspended for 2 games but ultimately fired from the Baltimore ravens for his action. Now he is eligible to be signed to any team in the NFL as a free agent. The NFL should’ve fined him a bigger amount of money for abusing his fiancée. The NFL should have also made it impossible for him to play in the NFL again. Also the fact he did go to prison or even jail for this is astonishing because if it were any other person they would be charged by the state and not just the NFL and defiantly go to at least jail for assaulting someone and knocking them unconscious.

Sexual assault is very common among men because they sometime can’t control themselves and end up over powering the women. Sexual violence is very common in postsecondary schools because the schools use a blind eye to find the people behind them. They do this because they want the image of the school to be as perfect as possible so they don’t investigate that often into these types of crimes. They also make the victim feel like they are the one that did the wrong doing by saying they probably gave hits to the attacker that they wanted it. One student that got away with sexual violence accusations against him is Jameis Winston by former Florida State student Erica Kinsman accused Winston of sexually assaulting her at his apartment in December 2012. He was never charged with a crime by police in Florida and the state’s office there declined to pursue a criminal case against him. Since there was no investigation against Winston there was no punishment for him. The state should’ve investigated at least a little bit into the complaint against Winston because if he did it then he got of easier than anyone else in this issue.