Casinos neither as good nor as bad as claimed, study says

LAS VEGAS - Casinos are neither as beneficial to communities as their backers claim nor as detrimental as their opponents argue, a study shows.

Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, spent two years studying eight communities where legalized gambling is relatively new.

They concluded that problem gambling - a term undefined in the study - affected 16 percent of the residents of the communities.

That figure is more than three times higher than a recent estimate placing that figure at 5 percent of the U.S. population.

The study also concludes crime and suicide were barely affected by the introduction of gambling and, in some places, such problems actually decreased.

Funded by a $250,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice, the study released last week presents casinos in a divergent light - at once providing an economic bounce to sagging cities while alternately stoking residents' fears of increased crime, the study's co-author Grant Stitt said.

''The results are complex and clearly mixed,'' he told lasvegas.com and the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Tuesday's editions.

To qualify for the study, communities must have had legalized gambling for at least four years but no longer than 10 years and must have been able to provide crime statistics.

The interviews were conducted in June and July and involved 400 residents in each community. Crime statistics were reviewed from 1987 to 1998.

The researchers studied St. Louis; St. Louis County, Mo.; St. Joseph, Mo.; Biloxi, Miss.; Sioux City, Iowa; Alton, Ill., Peoria, Ill. and East Peoria, Ill.

Biloxi was the only community to experience an increase in crime, which Stitt attributed to the city's resort status. Biloxi is home to nine casinos, multiple golf courses, a 26-mile beach it shares with the Mississippi Gulf Coast and numerous other attractions.

''Anytime you build a tourist attraction, you increase crime,'' Stitt said. ''You have an influx of tourists that are ready victims. They're relaxing and not on guard about being victimized.''

The researchers speculated that Biloxi's resort status also helped it record a decrease in personal bankruptcy, the only one of the eight communities to experience a decrease. The other seven communities were not considered to be tourist communities.

''In Biloxi, there was not a lot of economic opportunity and you had a situation where people were going to file bankruptcy,'' said study co-author Mark Nichols, an assistant economics and gaming professor at the University of Nevada, Reno,

''The casinos have come in and provided a large economic stimulus. Now people pay down debts and improve their lives. As a result, fewer people are filing for bankruptcy.''

Nichols said the casinos have provided jobs and increased tax revenue but haven't necessarily helped businesses

''The primary benefit are jobs and increased tax revenue,'' Nichols said. ''But people thought gamblers would come in and spend money in their shops. That really hasn't happened.''

Stitt attributed increased perceptions of problem gambling to the so-called close-to-home hypothesis, which suggests that when problem gambling occurs close to home, it taints a person's view on gambling.

Nichols said researchers didn't address problem gambling. Instead, they talked to a handful of psychologists and social service workers to get an idea of the scope of the problem.

''We found that people who were addicted to drugs or alcohol were often more likely to be problem gamblers,'' he said. He declined to speculate on the reason. ''That was beyond the scope of our knowledge.''