HOOKED ON GAMBLING: An innovative approach

The nation’s first gambling treatment court in Amherst provides one answer to problem gambling

Rachel Winas lied the first time she talked to therapists about gambling.

The former Seneca Niagara Casino employee had racked up $30,000 in credit card debt to fund a cocaine habit that had taken over her life. Her job at the casino, as well as frequent gambling trips, raised flags for administrators who run the country’s first gambling treatment court in Amherst.

It was her first run-in with the law. She faced the possibility of up to seven years in prison for identity theft.

But during a court-ordered evaluation at the Jewish Family Service of Buffalo and Erie County, the Cheektowaga resident falsely told the screener she had never bought a lottery ticket, played a table game nor put money in a slot machine.

“I answered no to every single one of them, because I was, like, all right, I don’t want to be here,” recalled Winas, now 26. “Literally, I said no for anything.”

Therapists believed Winas was at risk for developing a serious gambling problem.

It was in the courtroom of Judge Mark Farrell that she finally found help.

For defendants like Winas, Farrell is somewhat of a judicial pioneer. While therapeutic drug courts have become more common in courts across the country, no other court in the nation had developed a treatment program to deal with gambling-related crimes when he started the program five years ago.

That was in 2001 — five years after the first Canadian casino opened. In a two-week period, Farrell noticed a string of about a dozen gambling-related crimes like theft or embezzlement come through the town court.

The pattern was unusual for Amherst, a suburban town of about 120,000 people.

“In a couple of cases, the families were devastated that the guy has gone through the family’s money, the children’s money,” Farrell said.

Farrell is a believer in tailoring the justice system to deal with the root problems that lead to criminal behavior.

He was one of the first suburban judges in the nation to implement a therapeutic drug court a decade ago. Then, five years ago, he developed the first gambling court to help address the mental disorder that leads pathological gamblers to crime.

“The difference between a gambling treatment court and the traditional method of approaching this is that, as far as gambling treatment, they are involved early, confronted early, forced to face the responsibility and the existence of their gambling problem,” Farrell said.

Farrell diverted Winas from the traditional criminal justice system to an intensive drug treatment court program intended to break her addiction to cocaine.