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Do Pro Athletes Commit Crimes at Unusually High Rates?

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

Lawrence Delevingne of The Business Insider explores athletes and crime in a recent piece. He interviews Geoff, Duke Law Prof Lisa Kern Griffin, and me. Here's an excerpt:

But pro athletes aren't actually more likely to commit crimes that the average citizen. It just seems that way because of all the attention their cases get.

"I don't think there's any empirical evidence showing that professional athletes are more likely to commit crimes than the typical person," says Michael McCann, a sports law expert at Vermont Law School.

Most players are "just regular citizens that follow the law and are as good or as bad as the rest of us," McCann says. "We're definitely skewed...because a handful of players get in trouble repeatedly."

Geoffrey Rapp, a law professor at University of Toledo, says he hasn't seen evidence to show there's more criminality among athletes, but the cases that arise make sense. "We're talking about people who their whole lives have been praised...for being violent."

"It's possible that athletes become a bit de-sensitized to the consequences of their actions," says Rapp. Plus, when people are wealthy, they "tend to think they can get away with murder."

But it's wrong to assume pros get off easy.

Lisa Kern Griffin, a professor at Duke Law, says that while sports stars may be better represented because of their wealth, "I don't think that athletes are treated differently in the courtroom." Plus, all the attention can mean they don't get off with small infractions that others may not be prosecuted for, says Griffin.

For the rest, click here.

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on October 28, 2009 (boomark / email).