Crime, Deviance, and Problem Gambling: A Look at Some of the Sociological Yesterdays, Todays, and Tomorrows Bo Jason Bernhard, Ph.D. (cand.) University of Nevada, Las Vegas March 9, 2002

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Crime, Deviance, and Problem GamblingA Look
at Some of the Sociological Yesterdays, Todays,
and TomorrowsBo Jason Bernhard, Ph.D.
(cand.)University of Nevada, Las VegasMarch 9,
2002
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Sociological and Criminological Perspectives

• Who fits? Who doesnt?
• Who is normal? Who is deviant?
• Who is good? Who is bad?
• Criminal justice systems determine this
• so does the institution of
  religion
• and so does psychiatry

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Crime and Gambling ProblemsA Sociological
History

• The Sociological Questions Who defines a
  problem? How do we identify a problem?
  Which/whose criteria shall we use?
• Medical Labels vs. Religious Labels
• Tales from history Crime, gambling problems, and
  finding the bad guys

YESTERDAYS
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A History of Voices, A History of Vices
YESTERDAYS

• Problem gambling is a relatively young field of
  study
• First included in the DSM in 1980
• Thanks to people like Dr. Custer, Dr. Lesieur,
  Dr. Rosenthal, and other experts, the diagnosis
  evolved.
• Hence, one way to think about the trajectory of
  problem gambling is as a history of voices
  interpreting the lives of those who gamble too
  much.
• Long before medical/psych experts provided us
  with the proper interpretive parameters for these
  lives, moral/religious experts were entrusted
  with this task.

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Methodology

• Rachel Volberg on methods (1996)
• Historic Analysis
• Pre-1910 texts from the University of Nevada, Las
  Vegas Special Collections.
• Almost all from USA and England
• Qualitative exploration

YESTERDAYS
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How do/did we identify them?

• Virtually all of our current identifying
  criteria were alluded to in historic literature
  dating back hundreds of years.
• Moral/religious thinkers attacked gambling in
  general, but in doing so, they cited specific
  case studies that described individual lives.
• To identify those who gambled too much, the
  moral/religious thinkers of yesterday used the
  same diagnostic criteria that todays
  medical/psychological thinkers use.

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By Any Other NamesSome Favorite DSM Identifiers

• Disrupted Family or Spouse Relationship
• Work Problems
• Lying
• Preoccupation
• Tolerance Increasing Time, Increasing Money

• Chasing
• Loss of Control
• Action Gamblers and Escape Gamblers
• Of course, we relied on different names for
  these problems...

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Crime as an Identifying Criterion

• Used as the very first criterion in the very
  first DSM (1980)
• Still employed in the current, DSM-IV version
• As it turns out, we have long used criminal
  behavior in order to identify those who gamble
  too much.

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Historic Examples Crime and Criminal Behavior

• Tales of criminal activity to support a gambling
  habit were quite common.
• It consumes time, and produces
  sin, immorality, and
  crime --
  Spriggs-Smith (189012)
  

YESTERDAYS
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Concluding Speculations

• A Sociological History A Long and Documented
  Tale
• A Sociology of Medicalization of Mental Illness
  A Profound Parallelism Emerges
• A Sociology of Religion and Morality
  Institutional Contributions to Our Current
  Understandings and Public Discourses

TODAYS
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The So What? Question
TOMORROWS

• This history has profound implications for
  research work -- and even clinical work.
• A bio-psycho-social model extended?
• Taking a sociological step back in order to
  understand the problems of the problem gambler
• Our lives are shaped by forces far larger than
  us Adding a sociological imagination to the tool
  chest
• If pathological gambling is a medical problem,
  then why is it that I am treated as a moral one?

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Tomorrows Crime and Causes

• The Internet New Gamblers, New Crimes?
• Hypothesis As Gambling Moves into the
  Mainstream, So Too Will Its Associated Pathology
  Move into the Mainstream
• Fewer pre-existing pathologies? Pre-existing
  criminal activity?
• The Las Vegasization of America?

TOMORROWS
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Talk to me!

• Bo Bernhard
• University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• bobernhard_at_aol.com