Gamble For Free

In New Hampshire, USA, labor organizations believe that expanding gambling will help the State’s budget as well as creating jobs. Slot machines in the State bring in around 70% revenue for gambling casinos, so there is a proposal for a new casino to be built to help generate jobs and bring in money for the State through taxes.

Looking back in history, every time the government went into recession, casinos contributed greatly to bringing them out of it with huge amounts of money coming from gambling taxes. We can see that New Hampshire wants to learn from this gambling history and make an impact.

One concern for the State was the link between casinos and crime. A massive multiple year study by economists Earl Grinols and David Mustard looked into the link and found some interesting stats. To study trends in crime rates they used information taken from the FBI national crime database, and they looked at all States that have casinos and those that didn’t from years 1977 to 1996, a time where casinos were growing greatly. They studied the information and took into account all the factors that influenced crime rates. What they found was quite interesting. They discovered that counties which had casinos the average rate of crime, not counting murder, increased slightly after casinos were opened. That’s why I play online… it’s much safer.

Crimes connected to the behavior of gamblers increased the most. For example, nonviolent crimes like embezzlement. Last year in September 2008, the crime statistics for the year 2007 were published by the Maine State Police. The statistics pointed out that, within 2 years of slot gaming, larceny increased above the baseline rate in Penobscot County.