Does the introduction of legalized gaming increase the level of street crime in a community?
Communities with casinos are just as safe as communities without casinos. While anecdotal evidence and popular myth have perpetuated claims by gambling opponents that the introduction of casinos causes a rise in street crime, recent studies—both publicly and privately funded—as well as testimony from law enforcement agents working in casino jurisdictions, refute this claim. In their reports to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC), neither the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences nor the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) was able to confirm a relationship between crime and legalized gaming. The casino effect was “not statistically significant” for any of the crime outcome measures, according to the NORC report.(1—Source: National Opinion Research Center, et al., Gambling Impact and Behavior Study, report prepared for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (Chicago: University of Chicago, April 1, 1999),
