IN THE post-Ray Rice world of the National Football League (NFL), there has been a clear stance in regards to players who commit domestic violence — you will never play in the league again.

However, this hasn’t been enforced. At the start of the season, then New York Giants kicker Josh Brown served his one-game suspension for domestic violence and was welcomed back to the team with open arms.

He was given a new two-year contract back in April, despite the team knowing he was arrested in May 2015 for the abuse.

The Giants claimed they did their own investigation and were comfortable giving Brown the $4 million deal.

However, when reports emerged of the severity of the abuse they immediately released him and said they had been “misguided.”

Now Brown admitted to beating his wife. There were reports from her about the repeated instances of physical abuse and intimidation.

This wasn’t news. It’s just that the Giants and the league seemingly didn’t care. Brown and his wife got divorced — didn’t that ring any alarm bells?

It’s interesting how the league turns a blind eye to domestic abuse until evidence reaches the public.

Rice’s initial punishment was soft as commissioner Roger Goodell claimed they had no evidence that about the horrific punch in the hotel lift.

But not only had they seen the evidence, they had the video. And it wasn’t until it was released that they banned him for life.

This is the same with Brown. It wasn’t until the details of the abuse became public, including written admissions of guilt from Brown, that the league and Giants reacted.

When handed the suspension, the kicker said that he didn’t agree with it and that he did nothing wrong.

This was clearly a lie and either he was lying to the league and team or they knew the truth and hoped that the truth never revealed itself.

But it did and the 37-year-old will probably never play in the NFL again.

However, some feel that he should be allowed to keep playing.

Diana Moskovitz of Deadspin wrote a compelling article in which she makes the case that banning these men from playing sport actually makes things worse.

The reason Brown became violent with his ex-wife was money problems. Stopping him from earning may exacerbate the problem. Browns wife didn’t want him to lose his job, she just wanted him to get help.

The article goes on to assert that many wives and girlfriends who have been abused by their partners don’t want the men to lose their jobs.

But that the public outcry to each case has left the various sports and team with no option but to kick abusers out of the game.

“This grandstanding, no matter how well-intentioned, hasn’t made the complicated and life-threatening problem of domestic violence any less dangerous to the people who live with it,” she says. “What’s more, if leagues were to take up these suggestions, it would almost certainly make the problem worse. What feels good and what is right, especially in cases of domestic violence, are very different things. Zero-tolerance and similar get-tough penalties haven’t worked when used in the criminal-justice system. Expecting them to work in sports would be, at best, naive.”

I have never heard this argument before and I find it fascinating. While I can see the point, I strongly disagree with it.

What message does it send if these men can beat up their wives and girlfriends and keep their job without being punished?

The role of the club is not to become a prison to these men. To hold them during the day and pay them millions so they don’t go home and attack women.

Moskovitz adds: “The twisted absurdity of the dynamic keeps many from asking a far more important question: Does suspending — or firing, or banning — the man who punched his wife or girlfriend actually do anything to make his partner safer?

“There is no easy answer about what will do that. Anger management doesn’t work. Batterers’ intervention programs have had at best mixed results.

“Banning a player might be necessary at some point if he refuses to learn or grow but doing so also removes him from the community he respects and can in theory help him.

“ As Professor Beth Richie told Jezebel back in 2014: ‘Isolating someone from their meaningful community just means that they displace their violence onto someone else’.”

But isn’t that giving potential abusers the license to do what they want?

Surely by punishing them, that is sending out a clear message that the team and league condemn the violence and that there are consequences for their actions.

Maybe allowing them back into the sport is the answer, once they have gone through a vigorous rehabilitation programme and show remorse but even that I don’t agree with.

If a player decides to continue being violent after losing their job, that is not the fault of the team.

Perhaps one answer is for the league to make it compulsory for banned players to enter a domestic violence course, that way they are trying to fix the cause of the violence.

But perhaps they could act sooner, make it mandatory that every player who comes out of university and joins the league sits the course and make it clear that there is a one-strike and you are out policy.

Brown’s sentence was reduced from six games, the alleged baseline for first offences, to one because of the seriousness of the case.

The NFL didn’t regard the incident as a serious instance of domestic violence as simply grabbed his now-ex-wife’s wrist.

They also considered the difficulty in getting co-operation from Brown’s wife or from the police to be a mitigating factor.

But domestic violence is domestic violence. The NFL can’t pick and choose what they deem serious because it allows for grey areas.

Brown’s ex-wife had told multiple people about the abuse and there are claims she had to be switched rooms during the pro-bowl because she was abused in their room.

The problem is that no-one listened to her and it took the release of Brown’s diary for people to believe her, which is a wider problem with society — no-one believes women who accuse their partners of domestic abuse.

Some of the women who are and have been abused believe that in the NFL: “You will hear of a wife murdered before you hear another one come forward.”

They say that since Rice was suspended, the NFL has become less safe for women and that: “There’s abuse on every team. Everybody knows but you know not to tell.”

That is a damning indictment of the league and speaks volumes about the way Goodell is handling domestic violence cases.

From Moskovitz’s article, you can see why she doesn’t believe banning these players is the answer.

When various sufferers of domestic abuse have come out to say that they believe the punishment would make things worse then of course the response is to keep these men in jobs.

But I have to ask, are these women saying that because they truly believe it or do they feel responsible for their violent partners actions?

Is it some kind of Stockholm syndrome?

Does Brown’s wife feel like the reason he lashed out is because he had to financially support the family, because if that is the reason, it isn’t her fault and he deserved to lose his job.

All these players did and not punishing them wouldn’t help anyone, if anything it would send out a clear signal that domestic violence will be rewarded.