Slots Could Put Strain on County Prisons
By Matt Birkbeck, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.
Mar. 26–MORE INSIDE
More than 100 march to protest slots in Bethlehem.
PAGE B1
Ask the Montgomery County Prison warden what he recalls about working in a casino more than a quarter-century ago and it doesn’t take him long to remember.
"I dealt with everything from husbands and wives fighting over slot machine money to people stealing chips, pickpockets and scammers," said Julio Algarin, whose county could get one of the state’s 14 slots casinos.
"We may not be in the same environment as Atlantic City," said Algarin, "but I know what type of individuals and problems that gambling brings firsthand."
It’s people such as Algarin who may have to deal with those problems after the state Gaming Control Board awards the slots licenses later this year.
As prison populations in Pennsylvania are soaring without casinos, studies say the counties with slots will see a spike in crime, which will exacerbate crowding in their jails and hit their already tight budgets hard.
More than a dozen potential host counties — including Lehigh, Northampton and Monroe as well as Montgomery in this region — could see millions of visitors as well as millions of dollars in tax revenues and fees promised by casino operators. An increase in crime could use up much of that money. And some counties are starting to look at what the impact might be.
Not everyone agrees that casinos will result in more crime. Casino operators adamantly argue that gambling and crime are not connected.
"There is no increase in crime," said Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., president and chief executive officer of the American Gaming Association, a national trade association in Washington, D.C., for commercial casinos. "There’s no doubt that there are some problems that might result. If there’s a lot more people with money, you’ll see a lot more pickpockets. But statistically, crime will not rise."
Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham also isn’t convinced that a $325 million Allentown casino with 3,000 slots proposed by Aztar Corp. would have a major impact on crime.
"Every state’s prison population has risen over the last decade, and 90 percent of that is drug-related," Cunningham said. "Could there be some impact from a casino? There could be some. I just haven’t heard or believe anything to lead me to believe that it would be of any significant level to see major budgeting increases due to gaming."
However, two studies and an American Jail Association official say crime will rise in communities with casinos, and the costs to taxpayers will be substantial.
A 2002 study that analyzed FBI statistics over two decades in casino communities concluded that crime will spike by 8 percent and prison populations could increase by as much as 10 percent. That study was co-written by Earl Grinols, an economics professor at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, who testified before a Pennsylvania House gambling subcommittee in 2004.
A 2005 study by Richard M. Aborn, managing director of Constantine & Aborn, a New York City public policy firm that advises police departments and criminal justice agencies, showed that introducing a casino to a community will increase crime in all areas, from alcohol-related traffic accidents, prostitution, petty thefts, embezzlement, sexual assaults and drug arrests.
"A rise in crime is inevitable, and it will be taxing on the legal system, including the jails," Aborn said.
The policy study on gambling and crime concluded that in regions with gaming, such as in Nevada, New Jersey, Mississippi, Connecticut and Wisconsin, crime increased by a wide margin.
"By how much depends on where you are; there’s no national standard," Aborn said. "The increase rises from area to area, and they are sustained rises. In some cases, very significant."
Atlantic City, he said, saw a 238 percent increase in the first nine years of gaming. In the Connecticut town of Ledyard, which hosts Foxwoods casino and is near the Mohegan Sun casino, crime increased more than 500 percent during the first eight years.
Those crime rates have since decreased, but remain far above the national average, Aborn said.
Dave Keenhold, warden of the Monroe County Prison and a board member of the American Jail Association, said peers in gaming states have warned him to expect a 10 percent to 15 percent increase in the prison population should Monroe host a casino at Mount Airy Lodge in Paradise Township or Pocono Manor in Tobyhanna Township.
An extra 10 percent prison population could cost the county about $900,000 annually, based on existing costs for an inmate per day.
"And since I’m with the AJA, I routinely talk with wardens throughout the country, so I have a clue. I don’t think my counterparts in the Lehigh Valley know what’s going to hit them," Keenhold said.
Northampton County, for instance, is in line to receive an estimated $5 million in gaming revenue each year should the Las Vegas Sands group win a license for its planned $879 million hotel/casino in Bethlehem.
But even a 5 percent casino-fueled increase of inmates in Northampton’s already overflowing prison could cost taxpayers there an additional $1.2 million annually, based on existing daily costs per inmate, eating up a sizable chunk of the county’s expected gaming revenue on prison services alone.
Northampton County is preparing to consider the issue.
The Northampton prison, built in 1871, is near completion of a $22.8 million expansion from 640 to about 800 beds. But even with the expansion, acting Warden Scott Hoke said, the prison will quickly fill its beds.
"We are so overcrowded every inmate is a concern to us, and we naturally assume you’ll see some crime associated with the casinos," Hoke said.
Northampton County Executive John Stoffa said a prison population reform committee, charged with finding ways to keep inmate numbers down, will consider the possible effects of gaming when it hosts its first meeting next month.
"It’s on our radar," Stoffa said. "The population is increasing every day without it, and with gambling there will probably be more. But how much? I don’t know. But if it’s high, it could be devastating to county budgets."
In Montgomery County, where the 1,500-bed prison already is full, more inmates will not only present logistical problems, but also could cost county taxpayers $1.5 million to $3 million each year. Yet Algarin said there haven’t been any talks with commissioners about Boyd Gaming Corp.’s proposed casino in Limerick Township.
"I’m sure the commissioners are waiting for final approval," Algarin said.
Waiting instead of planning could prove fatal for county budgets, said Aborn, a former New York prosecutor.
Industry: No link to crime hike
The gaming industry, meanwhile, cites a report that says there have been too few studies on the relationship between gambling and crime to conclude that the rates will rise.
Fahrenkopf said the 1999 National Gambling Impact Study Commission report states there is "insufficient data to quantify or define" any relationship.
Dennis Gomes, president of Gomes Gaming Management in New Jersey and a principal in Matzel Development’s $1.2 billion plan to build a casino at Pocono Manor, said any venture that promises millions of visitors to a particular region will no doubt add some social woes.
"Gaming is like any other entertainment form, and there are people who will abuse it. But it doesn’t make gaming inherently evil," Gomes said.
Slots called most addictive
In Charles Town, W.Va., which has a 3,800 slots racetrack/casino, county Prosecuting Attorney Michael Thompson said gambling has produced a minimal amount of crime. It’s the casino, said Thompson, that has had to deal with issues such as forged checks.
"Most of the people who come to the racetrack are from out of state and if they have problems, they take them home with them," Thompson said.
The casino is in rural Jefferson County, which has only 45,000 residents, and experts such as Grinols warn that problem gambling and subsequent crime extend to larger populations within a 50-mile radius of a casino.
Other states have seen the effects of gaming as well. "The downside, the social impact, is usually related to problem gambling," said Jeffrey Marotta, manager of gambling treatment services for the Oregon Department of Human Services.
And problem gambling, Marotta said, usually is related to slots.
Marotta said there are nine Indian casinos in Oregon that offer an assortment of gaming. But it’s the 16,000 electronic gaming machines that are the most addictive, he said.
Pennsylvania will host 61,000 slot machines.
"What you are bringing into Pennsylvania is the most risky form of gambling," Marotta said. "And there are financial costs, including imprisonment."
Numbers going up
Delaware introduced slots casinos in 1995 in which three municipalities hosted a lone slots parlor — similar to the one-casino, one-town philosophy that Pennsylvania has adopted for much of the commonwealth.
The Delaware Department of Corrections says its prison population has risen by 50 percent from 4,508 inmates in 1994 to 6,801 in 2005.
And Delaware’s prison budget more than doubled during that period, from $85.5 million to $194 million.
Beth Welch, chief of media relations for the Delaware Department of Corrections, said it’s unclear what effect gambling has had on the prison population. "It hasn’t been studied," she said.
Council Bluffs, Iowa, a city of 60,000 people and three casinos, has seen violent crime rise by 50 percent in its decade of gambling. Officials said although some of that can be attributed to having more people in the city from the casinos, much of the blame for the increase is tagged to the late 1990s arrival of methamphetamine.
Prison populations have risen throughout the nation, including in nongaming cities and states.
Nationally, the inmate populations in jails and prisons rose by 31 percent from 1996 to 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In Pennsylvania, the state prison population rose by 50 percent from 1994 to 2005, while from 1994 to 2002 county jails saw a 49 percent jump in population, according to the state Department of Corrections and the 2004 Pennsylvania Abstract.
A state Department of Corrections spokeswoman, Sheila Moore, said the state is seeing an increase in nonviolent offenses such as drugs, drunken driving, fraud and forgery. And that’s on top of mandatory and tougher sentencing guidelines that date to the 1980s.
In Florida, where legislators considered legalizing gambling in the 1990s, the Office of Planning and Budgeting delivered a 1994 report estimating that incarceration and supervision costs alone for problem gambler crimes could cost residents $6 billion, including $1.66 billion in new prisons.
Fears of added costs
It’s the expected increases in prison costs that have spurred preliminary discussions between the Monroe prison and county officials.
"There is no doubt in my mind a casino will have an impact here," said Keenhold, the Monroe warden.
With his facility already near its 370-bed capacity, and with a burgeoning county population expected to near 200,000 by 2010, Keenhold said a casino in Monroe County would affect plans for prison expansion.
Without a casino, a 500-bed expansion could cost $22 million; with a casino, the expansion could rise to 600 beds and $28 million. Meanwhile, the county could get $3 million to $6 million annually in casino taxes and fee revenue, according to casino impact statements.
"It’s absolutely something to be concerned about," Donna Asure, a Monroe commissioner, said about a rise in prison population. "And I do think that the negative side of gaming will put a tax on the departments that are under the county commissioners, including the prison."
Other governments, such as Montgomery and Lehigh, have not begun discussions.
"There’s been no specific dialogue in regards to impact on prison numbers relative to casinos, none that I’ve been involved in," said Edward G. Sweeney, Lehigh County’s director of corrections.
Even state prisons, which house inmates with sentences greater than two years and already are at 110 percent capacity, are not preparing for any increase — and added cost — of inmates.
"This isn’t an issue that’s been discussed," said Moore of the state Department of Corrections.
Tom Grey, a spokesman for the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling in Washington, D.C., said the lack of communication and planning is not surprising.
"Government hasn’t done its due diligence," he said. "Residents say, ‘What do you mean it’s going to cost us more than we’re going to get?’ That’s what’s happening, and it’s a ticking time bomb."
Ready or not, slots are coming to Pennsylvania, with casino construction under way and licenses to be awarded this fall and winter.
Municipalities, in turn, won’t have much longer to prepare for any concurrent effect on prison populations.
matthew.birkbeck@mcall.com
610-379-3222
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