Casino Fact and Fiction Part 3: Crime and Problem Gamblers

In Part 1 of this series I discussed my thoughts on the proponents and opponents of land-based casinos in the US (mainly expanded gaming that has states building resort casinos in new locations); in Part 2 of this series I took a look at what a casino can do to the local economy, and now in this the third and final installment of the series I’ll take a look at a couple of the other issues opponents of gambling often use as bogeymen to scare people into voting against casinos in their town.

Crime Rate

To understand crime rates you first have to understand how they are calculated. Take Atlantic City for instance; a town of 39,000 residents that has off-the-chart crime-rate numbers. These statistics aren’t as bad as they first appear (not that Atlantic City doesn’t have a crime problem) because they don’t take into account the millions of visitors to the town each year. Simply put, more people equals more crimes, whether there is a casino or not.

Saying that a casino increases crime in Atlantic City is the same as saying Disney World increases crime in Orlando. With millions of visitors there are going to be more robberies, fights, and so on and so forth. When you use the number of residents to calculate the crime numbers you are only getting part of the story.

For example, Orlando has 83 crimes per 1,000 residents, double the average for the rest of Florida. Atlantic City is one of the few cities below Orlando at 93 crimes per 1,000 residents: http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/nj/atlantic-city/crime/

The point is, more people (including visitors) means more crime. That being said, when was the last time you heard Orlando talked about as one of the most crime-ridden cities in the United States? NEVER, because with the amount of tourism in the city most people understand that crime rates are artificially inflated when based on residency – for comparison’s sake, Miami has LESS crime than Orlando, at 69 crimes per 1,000 residents.

*all data came from www.neighborhoodscout.com*

So do casinos increase crime? Yes. But the reason is not because casinos attract a bad element; the reason is simply that casinos attract visitors.

Problem Gamblers

There isn’t much I can add to this section that I didn’t cover in this article on online poker from back in 2009: http://www.examiner.com/article/online-poker-does-not-contribute-to-problem-gamblers

Basically, if people have a gambling addiction the proximity to a casino is not going to impact their behavior considering the ease of placing a bet online, finding underground games, or simply travelling a little bit farther to the nearest casino.