gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

early 1990s, that was followed by a general nation-wide decrease in crime up to the present
time (the exception being violent crime in Alberta which has not decreased). There simply is
not enough year-to-year variability in either gambling availability or crime rates to fairly
evaluate whether crime indices would move up and down coincident with up and down
changes in gambling availability. Thus, there appears to be very little in the way of reliable
findings from this analysis. The one exception is the significant decrease in illegal gambling that
can be plausibly attributed to the increases in legal gambling availability.
Summary
In summary, there is a relationship between crime and gambling by virtue of the fact that a
small percentage of problem gamblers (~7%) report commit offences as part of their addiction
(particularly domestic violence, fraud, and theft) and because gambling venues provide some
additional opportunities for crime (cheating-at-play, passing counterfeit bills, money
laundering, loan-sharking, theft, impaired operation of motor vehicle). The self-reported rate
of gambling-related crime is much higher than the observed/detected incidents of gamblingrelated
crime (which is true of most crime). However, neither the self-reported or detected
incidents of gambling-related crime represent a significant portion of overall crime in Alberta.
This finding is true even within categories where gambling-related crime occurs (i.e., as a
reference point there were roughly 76,000 incidents of theft and 12,600 incidents of fraud
reported in Alberta in 2009). A possible exception is domestic violence, where very tentative
evidence indicates that 8% of domestic violence incidents in Lethbridge might be gamblingrelated
(see footnote 81). These overall low rates of gambling-related crime are partly due to
the fact that gambling-related criminal activity only occurs in about 7% of problem gamblers,
and problem gamblers only account for 2% to 3% of the adult population. It is also important
to recognize that a portion of this problem gambling driven crime would likely have occurred
independent of the increased availability of legal gambling, as significant rates of problem
gambling existed even prior to legal availability. Of final note, there has been quite a significant
decrease in illegal gambling since the 1960s, which offsets increases in gambling related crime.
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