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
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
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.,