Gambling

Gambling and crime are common and, at times, intersecting behaviors that to different degrees and in various forms take place across many regions of the world. Indeed, throughout history, gambling itself has been depicted as both a criminal and criminogenic activity. For example, in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, gambling was seen by many as a national scourge, leading to fecklessness and crime, and was subject to selective prohibition. Similarly, in the United States, attitudes toward gambling have fluctuated over time, with gambling being construed as a criminal and moral evil as well as a popular leisure activity with social and economic benefits. However, the latter decades of the 20th century have seen many states’ tolerance of gambling turn to one of acceptance, with gambling recast as a mainstream leisure pursuit. Neoliberal economic policies adopted by a significant number of countries since the 1970s have resulted in the liberalization of gambling laws and policy and the development of an increasingly global commercial gambling industry. Accelerated by technological innovation, a culture of consumption, increased wealth, and freely available credit, opportunities to gamble have proliferated across Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific. Yet, the widespread availability of increasingly potent gambling products and services has resulted in gambling-related harm becoming a significant public health issue that has raised public and political concern and been the subject of academic attention. Such harms occur across multiple domains—financial, health, emotional and psychological, relationship, work, and education—and extend beyond individual gamblers, affecting families, communities, and wider society. Since the early 1960s, international gambling studies has been dominated by research looking to reduce gambling problems and gambling-related harms. Despite this, the interconnection between gambling and crime has not been an area of extensive research inquiry, although the breadth of studies illustrates that the relationship between gambling and crime is complex and multifaceted. Academic research in this area has explored the impact of betting establishments on crime within communities, the relationship between crime and problem gambling, gambling-related crime and the administration of justice, gambling and organized crime, betting-related manipulation of sporting events, and online gambling-related offending.