Illinois Casinos: No ID, No Entry!
All nine casinos throughout Illinois will begin checking driver's license or state ID's of people who want to enter the casino and look 30 years old or younger. Starting August 15, 2006 Illinois will become the first state to require the checking of potential patrons' identification card in an effort to keep the compulsive gamblers from feeding their addictions, gaming regulators announced Thursday.
The card will be swipe through an electronic bar-code machines designed to verify the information written on them, and those devices will be synced with the state Gaming Board's self-ban database to automatically flag down problem gamblers.
A side benefit of the new rule is that it will help employees catch underage gamblers who try to get on with fraudulent licenses. Since people must be 21 or older in order to enter casinos.
Surprisingly, more than 3,600 people have signed up to ban themselves from Illinois casinos since the state began offering its self-exclusion program in 2002. Among the 3,600 only about 330 are under the age of 31, but gambling regulators see the age cutoff as a means to create a "test age group" that could help determine if older gamblers eventually should be carded, too.
According to the Gaming Board Chairman Aaron Jaffe, during a meeting of the panel Thursday he said: "These efforts will continue to be evaluated to determine their effectiveness. At some point in the future, this board may require that the driver's licenses of other age group be checked as well."
However, this carding system causes worries among casino operators. The under-31 rule reflects a compromise between the Gaming Board and the casino industry, which expressed concern that carding all 15 million-plus people who enter Illinois casinos each year would spark long lines and patron angst, especially on busy weekends.
Tom Swoik, executive director of the Illinois Casino Gaming Association said: "What we are looking to do is improve the program as much as we can but still being short of having to card every player."
Casino companies are agreeing to other changes beside the carding system. The self-ban program is a nice rule for instance. Among them is agreeing to seek criminal trespassing charges against all self-banned patron spotted inside or trying to board casinos.
The decision whether to prosecute self-banned gamblers is left up to casino managers. To date, those gamblers have caught returning to casinos 614 times, with only 138 arrests.
Upon signing up fort he program, the people agree to donate winnings to organizations that offer to compulsive gamblers. More than $300,000 has been given to those groups to date.