Earlier this week, I posted about Ray Lewis’ comment that if there is a football lockout, crime rates will increase. While Lewis has taken a media beating, I suggested that I hadn’t seen anyone cite data to refute (or support) Lewis’ claim. A columnist in Salt Lake City does look at some data that perhaps sheds light on the relationship between football and crime:

Well, it turns out that crime rates among the general population do actually decrease during the football season. The FBI believes the trend is not connected to football, but to the change in weather and the end of summer break for students. Apparently, criminals like to do their work in warm weather and when they’re not on vacation.

Research indicates that the only crime connection to football might be the increase in domestic violence on NFL Sundays when home teams lose emotional games. Maybe Lewis is wrong; maybe the lockout will reduce crime in the home.

I wish there were specific citations in this column but here is the gist of this cited data: overall, crime goes down in fall (compared to summer) and domestic violence goes up after certain game outcomes. The problem here is that it is difficult to separate the effects of fall (weather, kids back to school, etc.) from the effect of football games themselves. And if there are no close football games, then domestic violence cases might go down. Per my earlier post, I still think we could get more specific data, particularly comparing crime rates on Sundays with or without games and crime rates on other nights with football games (Monday, Thursday, Saturday) versus those same nights without games.

This columnist also throws out another idea that I had thought about:

Then it occurred to me: Maybe Lewis didn’t mean the fans would go on a crime wave without football; maybe he meant THE PLAYERS.

That’s not a big stretch. Look how Antonio Bryant has fared in recent months without football. Look what Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress and Ben Roethlisberger, among many others, did when they were away from football. Idle hands and all that. Maybe what Lewis meant was that we better end this lockout before the players starting (ran)sacking villages and throwing innocent bystanders for losses and intercepting Brinks trucks and so forth.

This image would fit with research suggesting NFL players are arrested at fairly high rates.