Gambling Court -- NY Times
Addiction is addiction is addiction. It doesn't matter if it's drugs, alcohol or gambling. A new court in New York is focusing on how to help people overcome their addictive tendencies through treatment options. The docket isn't full of illeagal gamblers, but just like with drugs it's a rash of folks who will break the law to get the funds necessary to feed the addiction.
AMHERST, N.Y. — The docket in front of Justice Mark G. Farrell one recent Tuesday afternoon looked like a routine roster of small-time crime: petty larceny, attempted burglary, check forgery. But the offenders shared a single motivation: money to gamble.
Such is the criminal parade in the country’s first and only gambling treatment court. Following the model of about 2,000 “therapy courts” devoted to drugs and spousal abuse that have opened nationwide in the last two decades, the setup here allows defendants to avoid jail time if they follow a court-supervised program that includes counseling sessions, credit checks and twice-monthly meetings with Justice Farrell.
“I realize this is demanding,” the judge said the other day as he ordered Andrew Hallett, 19, who forged his father’s checks to feed a bingo and lottery addiction, to attend Gamblers Anonymous meetings twice a week. “If you continue to apply yourself to the program, and you continue to go to the self-helps, we’ll get you through it.”
Mirroring the rise in gambling nationally and the opening of two new casinos near this suburb of Buffalo, the court’s caseload has grown steadily since it opened in 2001, to several dozen cases a year from a handful. And as gambling has become more popular, with the growth of online poker and with New York State lottery revenues nearly doubling to $6.8 billion over the past six years, Justice Farrell’s docket includes middle-aged parents with college degrees and steady jobs as well as young drug users with criminal records.
Ny Times Article
2 comments:
Your going to find terrible stories about gambling but we have to show the positive effects of gambling as well.
Judge Farrell is a corrupt judge. In front of my son he solicited a bribe from my now ex husband, who was at that abusing me, to put me in jail and I was, with no charges. He was running for NY State supreme Court at that time. Subsequently my husband was convicted 2 times in Judge Farrel's court of domestic violence with No jail time! Judge Farrell is more than an ego maniac he is corrupt. I was contacted by the state judicial review board to testify, but was to afraid at that time of Farrell. Not anymore I am stepping forward!
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