GAMBLING AND CRIME

When a casino opens, the local crime rate remains steady at first but begins to rise after two or three years, according to a survey by two economists covering all 3,165 counties in the United States.

Their findings are worth considering as gambling continues to attract interest in Maine and Penn National Gaming plans an expansion in Bangor.

“We find that crime increases over time in casino counties, and that casinos do not just shift crime from neighboring regions, but create crime,” say David B. Mustard, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia, and Earl L. Grinols, distinguished

professor of economics at Baylor University.

They found that crime rates in casino counties “were stable prior to opening, slightly lower in the year of casino introduction, returned to approximately average levels for the next two or three years, and increased thereafter.” By the fifth year, all classes of crime were up – robbery, by 136 percent; aggravated assaults, 91 percent; auto theft, 78 percent; burglary, 50 percent; larceny, 38 percent; rape, 21 percent, and murder, 12 percent.

They calculated that 8.6 percent of property crimes and 12.6 percent of violent crimes were attributed to casinos.

The 33-page report, dated September 2004, came to attention only recently, when it was published in an economics journal and The Washington Post printed an article about it. The study covers the years 1977 to 1996. It can be found on the Internet at http://www.terry.uga.edu/~dmustard/dbmcv.htm

Robert Welch, executive director of the Maine Gambling Control Board, says he has no quarrel with the methodology of the study, but notes that Bangor’s gambling facility is a racino and will have mainly slot machines and will lack the elaborate array of other games and retail shops featured at the big casinos elsewhere.

Jon Johnson, general manager of Hollywood Slots, the initial gambling facility of the Penn National project, is more critical. He says, “Anyone who deals with numbers can just about prove anything they want to prove.” He says that in his 30-year career in gambling establishments around the country he has seen increases in employment and sometimes an increase in crime simply because more people are drawn into an area.

Professor Mustard was asked whether he had any advice for a medium-sized city about to have a large casino operation. He replied that it could consider measures to reduce problem and pathological gambling. The Maine state government and Penn National are doing that, through earmarking a percentage of the proceeds for addressing problem gambling and providing counseling services. State agencies and Hollywood Slots direct problem gamblers to a nationwide toll-free hotline, 800-522-4700, connecting with the National Council on problem gambling.

Other counties with casinos probably have taken similar measures to deal with addiction and related problems, and their crime rates rose nonetheless. So state and local authorities as well as Penn National, can be expected to watch closely for any substantial increase in Bangor-area burglaries, robberies, embezzlements or other crimes as the new gambling center takes shape and gets into full-scale operation.