However, if Ray Lewis' theory is correct, those numbers will be on the rise soon and he's blaming the NFL lockout. The Baltimore Ravens linebacker believes crime will rise if the lockout continues into the season.
"Do this research if we don't have a season -- watch how much evil, which we call crime, watch how much crime picks up, if you take away our game," Lewis said in an interview with with ESPN's Sal Paolantonio.
Lewis' explaination as to why he thinks crime rates will increase without football, "There's nothing else to do," he said.
Lewis isn't just talking about professional football players getting arrested, he predicts fans will become more violent because the violence they're used to seeing every Sunday will be eliminated.
"There's too many people that live through us, people live through us," Lewis said. "Yeah, walk in the streets, the way I walk the streets, and I'm not talking about the people you see all the time."
While Lewis' theory is interesting, he doesn't have the stats to back it up. However, the opposite perspective -- that football leads to more violence -- does have some legs. In 2009, a study revealed that from 1995-2006 when an NFL game ended in an upset, the home state of the losing team saw a brief uptick in domestic violence.
The NFL lockout is now in its 69th day, and a resolution appears nowhere in sight.
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