An advocacy group in Connecticut, home to two of the world’s largest casinos, is pushing for new courts that would provide treatment rather than jail time for chronic gamblers charged with stealing to support their habits.
Just as counseling is ordered in prosecutions of drug users, gamblers who commit fraud to keep up with spiraling financial troubles also should be offered a way out of their problems, advocates say.
“In prisons they’re gambling. There’s practically zero help with gambling problems,” said Marvin Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. “They often come out and do it again.”
The group has organized a conference Friday and invited Judge Mark Farrell of Amherst, N.Y., who founded the first gambling treatment court in the United States.
“Most people look at compulsive gambling as a character flaw, irresponsible, not able to control themselves. That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Farrell said. “I’ve had people in my court, 18 or 20 years old, stealing from their parents, losing $2,000 in Texas hold ’em games. It’s a problem that sits just below the surface.”
Steinberg said many gamblers caught stealing from employers, forging checks or finding other ways to illegally support their gambling addiction or pay off gambling-related debts would otherwise be law-abiding citizens.
The problem is getting worse as legalized gambling explodes with more casinos, lotteries, Internet-based poker, video slots and other enticements to gamble.
U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor said federal prosecutors have seen a spike in financial crimes due to gambling addiction.
“Twenty years ago when you saw people committing these crimes it was due to drug addiction,” he said.
Prosecutors have limited choices, he said.
“We only have one choice, prosecute or not prosecute,” O’Connor said.
Authorities can, however, be innovative with the sentencing judge by requiring treatment for gambling addiction and banning gamblers from ever going to a casino, O’Connor said.
John Cipolla, a Providence, R.I., man who spent more than two years in prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, said the legal system taught him a lesson but could have been more flexible.
He said jail time was the prod he needed, though “a more community-based sentencing should have been more productive.”
Cipolla, 49, stole more than $240,000 from a Providence city agency where he worked. He said courts helped drug addicts, but none assisted gambling addicts such as himself.
“I felt as though there should be something, expert testimony, that could make a judge or prosecutor know what was driving me,” he said.
His gambling, he said, started slowly, but intensified when Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun opened in southeastern Connecticut in the early 1990s. In addition, racinos are close to home in Rhode Island, Cipolla said.
“When I went to those places, it really took off,” he said.
Rep. Michael Lawlor, co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, said he approves of the concept, but said specialty courts handling drugs, mental health, domestic violence and gambling could complicate the state’s judicial system.
“It’s still a crime. You still have to be held accountable,” Lawlor said.
Farrell blames government’s self-interest for failing to establish gambling courts.
“The biggest obstacle to expansion has been government itself,” he said. “Look who’s partnering with gaming. It’s much easier to go after drugs and alcohol.”
