gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

Crime
It is a common perception that increased gambling is associated with increased crime.
However, in many ways this may be a vestige of the well publicized involvement of organized
crime in the development of legal gambling in the United States in the 1940s. The actual
empirical evidence of an association is mixed, with almost as many studies finding no impact on
crime as studies that have found increases in crime as a result of increased availability of
gambling (Williams, Rehm & Stevens, 2011).
Theoretically, the introduction of legal gambling should influence crime rates in one of several
ways. One way is by decreasing the rate of illegal gambling. A second is by increasing the
number of problem gamblers, a minority of which engage in crimes (primarily property crime)
to support their gambling. A third is because certain forms of gambling (e.g., casinos) offer
increased opportunities for illegal activity to occur (e.g., passing counterfeit money, money
laundering, cheating-at-play). A fourth is by creation of venues that serve alcohol and thereby
potentially contribute to alcohol-related offences, and/or venues that disproportionately
attract a clientele with criminal tendencies. A fifth and final way is by increasing the overall
number of visitors to the area (this population is often not taken into account when
determining a jurisdiction’s crime rate per capita).
Population Surveys
Several questions in the 2008 and 2009 Alberta population surveys potentially shed light on
the rate at which gambling problems directly lead to criminal activity: a) “Has your
involvement in gambling caused you or someone close to you to write bad cheques, take
money that didn't belong to you or commit other illegal acts to support your gambling in the
past 12 months?”, b) “In the past 12 months has gambling ever caused an instance of
domestic violence in your household?”, c) “In the past 12 months, how much money have
you illegally obtained in order to gamble?”, d) “In the past 12 months has your gambling
been a factor in your committing a crime for which you have been arrested?”, e) “Were you
convicted for this crime?”, and f) “Were you incarcerated for this crime?”. (Note: Earlier in
this report domestic violence was addressed under family impacts of problem gambling.
However, because domestic violence is also an assault violation in the Criminal Code of
Canada it will be dealt with in this section as well).
Among the 403 problem gamblers from the combined 2008 and 2009 surveys, 29/403 (7.2%
+ 2.5%) indicated that their gambling had caused them to commit an illegal act, 17/403 (4.2%
+ 1.9%) indicated that gambling was the cause of an incident of domestic violence, 25/403
(6.2% + 2.4%) indicated they had obtained money illegally for their gambling, 5/403 (1.2% +
1.1%) indicated they had been arrested for committing a gambling-related crime, 2/403
(0.5%) indicated they were convicted for this crime, and 1/403 (0.2%) indicated they were
incarcerated for this crime.
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