Kevin Kaerwer, Dr. Adam Parker Angelo State University Professional athletes get paid to perform well in the sport that they are participating in. Some sports cause athletes to participate in constantly violent situations throughout the game, so theoretically it is their job is to be violent. Afterwards these athletes are asked to go back to their normal lives and contribute to society as a normal individual. Is there a correlation between these professional athletes who perform in these violent sports and the committing of violent crimes off the field? I conducted a systematic review through multiple databases. The primary databases I used were Google Scholar as well as Angelo State University’s library research database. The research studies were limited to Scholarly Peer Reviewed Journals as well as statistical databases. The aim of the search was to find studies that indicated the crime rates of professional athletes, specifically violent crimes. The other goal was to locate studies that focused on sports participation and violent behavior in adults as well as juveniles. Criteria also included violent or aggressive behavioral tendencies when correlated with the participation in sports, contact or non contact. In my database search, the keywords violent sports and crime, athletes and violence, crime and athletes, aggression in athletes, crime rates in athletes and deviant behavior in athletes were used. Introduction The purpose of this meta-analysis is to research the violent behaviors, aggressive tendencies and prevalence of violent crimes committal by individuals that participate in sports that are of contact or non-contact orientation. Purpose of the Study Methods Discussion In comparison with the average percentage of individuals that committed crime in the year 2013 the meta-analysis indicates that the percentage of individuals prone to violence is substantially higher in these subjects. This includes individuals who participate in contact sports such as football and basketball. The percentage is particularly high in juveniles who participated in contact sports as well which is most likely due to the smaller subject size as well as the inability of younger children to fully understand the difference between right and wrong when it comes to violence. Pro athletes showed very small instances of committing violent crimes which is ironic since stories on athletes committing violent crimes is very prevalent in todays media. Specifically, the violent crime rates of National Football League players who had much smaller percentages than what is stereotypically believed of athletes involved in this very violent sport. This may indicate that it is the press overemphasizing the few violent crimes committed by pro football players which adds to the stereotype. Of the five studieswas able to pool together a sample of 322,685 subjects. Studies involving the behavior of individuals were measured for the time period of a year. While the other studies contained data over multiple years in regards to violent crime and participation in a professional sport. The data was then compared to a population of 100,000 individuals to mirror I US Justice Department statistics on Crime Rates in the United States. I took the number of individuals that were indicated as being violent, aggressive or convicted of violent crimes and divided it by the total number in the study. The percentage gave me the percent who have violent behavior, I took the totals of those to get a total percentage. Expressing the numbers over 100,000 was used to express how many individuals would have violent behavior in a bigger population than that of a professional team. The meta-analysis indicated that on average 2.79% of the population shows violent tendencies either through violent behavior, aggressive tendencies or conviction. This would be a total of 3,014 total individuals displaying violent tendencies. When data is expanded to fit a population of 100,000 that equals 47,463 individuals that were indicated as showing violent tendencies. In 2013 alone there were 1,163,146 cases of violent crime alone, in comparison with a population of 100,000, that is individuals. That percentage is equal to.3679%. This is significantly higher than the average percentage of individuals prone to violence found in the meta- analysis. Results Inclusion/Exclusion Violent Sports and Violent Athletes: A Meta-analysis of Contact Sport Participation and Violent Behavior Table 1 All studies that were in English as well as focused on the violence, crime rates as well as aggressive behavior of individuals that participated in sports. I chose however to focus on 5 studies in particular for my meta-analysis. The criteria for them was that they must have more than 100 subjects within the group. The studies involving assessment of behavior had to be done using a recognized behavioral questionnaire. There were also measures in juvenile studies between individuals who participated in violent sports as well as non-violent sports. Statistics based on criminal behavior were based on data obtained from databases on the number of athletes that participate in the professional sports such as the National Basketball League, National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. The behavior of children or juveniles and their aggressive behaviors in relation to sport participation were studied more than in adults so the analysis focused more on juvenile than adult behavior. These six were chosen because they represented exact number of individuals who were indicated as being violent or aggressive as well as individuals who actually committed the crimes as a percentage of the total population. The numbers were then taken as a percentage of a 100,000 which is the common way percentage of crime is indicated by the US Department of Justice. Tendency to Commit Violent Crimes or Show Violent/Agrressive Behavioral Tendencies StudyAthletesViolent BehaviorPercentPer 100,000 Moesch (2010) % Bennedict (1997) % Schafer (1969) % NBA % MLB % NHL % NFL (2003) % NFL (2004) % NFL (2005) % NFL (2006) % NFL (2007) % NFL (2008) % NFL (2009) % NFL (2010) % NFL (2011) % NFL (2012) % NFL (2013) % Total %