Gambling Studies Have Different Results

Different studies have revealed different results, so who do you turn to in order to find out how gambling and the addition of slot machines and casinos affect the area where they are now located? Casinos and politicians have a tendency to pick whichever one is currently supporting their current take on slot machines and gambling, so you can’t really ask them.

In 2006, Earl Grinols of Baylor University in Texas, and David Mustard of the University of Georgia, came to the conclusion that gambling did affect the area negatively, but not immediately. They studied crime data ranging from 1977 to 1996 and found that assault, burglary, robbery and theft all increased and homicide fell.

They also found that the increases came several years after the casinos opened, not usually within the first couple of years. They say that this is because over the years gambling addicts are developed and as they run out of ways to get money to gamble they end up turning to a life of crime to support their addiction.

However, a study by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000 says that casinos do not affect crime dramatically. They studied eight cities for the four years before they had casinos and the four years after they had them and found that there was no consistent affect on crime. They showed that the economic benefits were consistent and significant. They said that this proved that casinos do not affect all communities in the same way, although they did find that bankruptcies did increase in all of the communities that they studied.




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