Gambling
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Description
Gambling can be defined broadly as participation in any risk-taking activity, from investing in stocks to planning nuclear weapons strategies to taking a lover. It can also be defined more narrowly as a bet or wager on the outcome of a probability game designed for risk-taking, or on a sporting event. This discussion concentrates upon the latter type of gambling, which historically and cross-culturally has been regulated or prohibited by law. Why this should be so is not entirely clear. Gambling cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered inherently evil (malum in se). Those who gamble do so voluntarily. Why, then, has gambling been given so much negative attention by governments? Why is betting—or accepting bets—sometimes viewed as a crime? Reasons that can be singled out are that gambling has been thought to be destructive of personality, to be fundamentally immoral, to invite fraud and deception, and to engender social decay.
Source Publication
Encyclopedia of Crime & Justice
Source Editors/Authors
Sanford H. Kadish
Publication Date
1983
Edition
1
Volume Number
2
Recommended Citation
Skolnick, Jerome H., "Gambling" (1983). Faculty Chapters. 1405.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1405
