HOOKED ON GAMBLING: An innovative approach

By Denise Jewell
Niagara Gazette

Fri, May 16 2008

— 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.
If she hadn’t landed in front of Judge Mark Farrell, the last year of Winas’ life could have gone very differently.
The therapists assigned her to gambling court and directed her to attend several Gamblers Anonymous meetings and a 12-week class that warned of the pitfalls of gambling.
Winas admits gambling was a big part of her life.
“I’m a big scratch-off freak,” Winas said. “It was just part of my life all the time.”
Winas also attended a mandatory drug recovery program every day and kept regular court dates and took drug tests to monitor her progress for a year.
Now clean and working in her family’s dry cleaning business, Winas is grateful for the opportunity to avoid jail time and straighten out her record.
“I worked hard for that. It was tough to go through that program, but it was very beneficial,” Winas said. “I didn’t see it at the time, but it’s still working now.”
Farrell estimates that the court has screened more than 125 people for gambling problems, including requesting credit reports and sending defendants for a gambling evaluation.
But flagging people as problem or pathological gamblers still poses a problem for the court.
Farrell believes that has stemmed from a misperception of problem gambling.
“Gambling, traditionally, has been considered to be, not an illness or an addiction, but more of a character flaw,” Farrell said. “So people are more likely to admit they’re a heroin addict than they would be to admit that they’re a compulsive gambler.”
Farrell’s program is one of a few innovative approaches to treating gambling addiction in the country. He has traveled to 15 states to explain to other jurisdictions how to set up a gambling court. On Monday, Farrell spoke to more than 100 judges gathered in Niagara Falls for the 27th annual education conference of the National Judges Association.
“The biggest obstacle to a court is allocation of resources,” Farrell said. “Government is basically benefiting from gaming to fill budget gaps to provide a supposed benefit to the community.”
Although gambling revenue projections have skyrocketed in recent years, treatment advocates like James Maney believe programs to address gambling’s fallout have lapsed behind.
Maney, executive director of the New York Council on Problem Gambling, compares the social impact of gambling to transportation safety and other areas governments have traditionally been involved in addressing.
“We don’t build a highway without putting up the guardrails,” Maney said.

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