Pathological and Sub-clinical Problem Gambling in a New Zealand Prison: A Comparison of the Eight and SOGS Gambling Screens

Prison populations have been identified as having elevated levels of problem gambling prevalence, and screening for problem gambling may provide an opportunity to identify and address a behaviour that may otherwise lead to re-offending. A problem gambling screen for this purpose would need to be brief, simple to score, and be able to be administered, with limited training, by prison assessors. The Eight Screen was developed as a brief tool for Family Doctors to use in a patient population, but has also been used effectively in more generalised populations. In this study 100 inmates received into a medium security prison were screened using the Eight screen and the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), with those scoring three or more on either screen then being assessed by a specialist clinician using DSM-IV Pathological Gambling Disorder criteria. Twenty-nine inmates were screen positives who also correlated highly with assessed gambling pathology. The Eight Screen appears to be a suitable gambling screen for prison use and has since been adopted as an assessment instrument by the New Zealand Department of Corrections.