Sociological and Criminological Perspectives

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

2. Sociological and Criminological Perspectives • Who “fits”? Who doesn’t? • 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

3. Crime and Gambling Problems:A 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

4. YESTERDAYS A History of Voices, A History of Vices • 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.

5. 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

6. 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 today’s medical/psychological thinkers use.

7. 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... By Any Other Names:Some Favorite DSM Identifiers

8. 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.

9. 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 (1890:12) YESTERDAYS

10. 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

11. 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 moralone?”

12. 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

13. Talk to me! Bo Bernhard University of Nevada, Las Vegas bobernhard@aol.com