“The Attorney General’s position that legal gambling casinos will increase crime is unfounded,” a study by Dr. Nitzan Yaniv of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design states.
Yaniv said that the study first evaluated the scientific concepts employed by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein in his opinion against permitting certain forms of gambling. Yaniv found that Rubinstein had grouped a description of the effect of the negative effects of addiction to gambling, crime, idleness, broken families and concepts relating mostly to psychiatric disturbances, under the term “pathological gambling”.
Yaniv asserted that a few studies had examined the effects of gambling on behavior.
The studies found that the proportion of pathological gambling in Israel was similar to the rest of the world. 3% of gamblers will develop a psychiatric disturbance, and 1.5% will fall into a life of crime as a result.
In his study, Yaniv considered the police data on gambling violations in 2000-2001, and the link between those violations and criminality. Yaniv claimed that the police data indicated that gambling was a marginal part of general criminality.
Yaniv said, “The exposure and prosecution of gambling violations is declining substantially. The number of cases against civilians caught gambling in illegal casinos, and the number of indictments eventually filed, are falling.”
Yaniv added, “There is no research basis for the reasoning used by the Attorney General against legalized gambling; his reasoning is due to conservatism on the part of the governing establishment.”
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on August 28, 2003