Crime In The 1920s Essay

Before 1920 the United States was experiencing major rises in crime due to the intoxication of its citizens because of alcohol. So in 1920 the United States government created the 18th amendment, a ban on alcohol, which according to Mark Thornton, an assistant professor at Auburn University, was a “Noble Experiment” by the government to reduce crime in the country. Little did the government know was that the passing of this amendment would do the complete opposite and significantly raise the crime rates in the country by giving gangsters a whole new way to commit crime. The prohibition of alcohol in the United States during the 1920s created a major rise in the amount of crime and homicides, particularly in the city of Chicago. The prohibition

caused a rise in crime largely due to introducing Al Capone and his mob to organized crime, bootlegging, and increased mass homicide opportunities that majorly corrupted the government and its citizens.
Before the prohibition people were free to go to breweries and saloons and drink as much as they wanted to.

Richard J. Hopkins explains in his article called Prohibition and Crime saying “the liquor traffic has been the dominant cause of crime, misery, and pauperism. Intoxicants directly or indirectly, have sent more people to jails, penitentiaries, and insane asylums than any other cause” (Hopkins, 41). The government saw this as a major problem so they enacted the 18th amendment which banned the consumption, sale, and manufacturing of alcohol in the country. This forced many Americans to illegally get their hands on alcohol and illegally produce alcohol. By making it illegal for people to possess alcohol, it paved the way for gangsters like Al Capone to get involved with the process by bootlegging alcohol and selling it illegally in bars called “speakeasies”. Al Capone and his mob were able to get away with illegally producing and selling alcohol by using newly introduced strategy of organized crime and paying off local government officials and police

officers.
Organized crime is a crime that is planned and committed by majorly powerful groups.

This style of crime was created during the prohibition usually between mobs and government officials and police officers. “ordinary criminal groups become organized when they buy off police officers, fix ballot boxes, replace union presidents, call in favors, and bestow generosity upon friends in high places” (Smith and Papachristos). Al Capone was a major participant in these organized crimes in the Chicago area during the 1920s. Capone had a very large number of relationships with politicians and mob members that he used to his advantage to commit many crimes relating to the prohibition. In the article Trust Thy Crooked Neighbor it talks about Capone’s many relations with politicians and explains the relation with one politician named William Thompson who was the mayor of Chicago during the prohibition. The article explains that “given the known connection Al Capone and Mayor Thompson, these appointments generated accusations of Capone buying Serritella’s position with contributions to Thompson’s election fund” (Smith and Papachristos). Capone used his relations with Mayor Thompson to get his politician friend Daniel Serritella a government position which would help him get away with hundreds of crimes. Another major event of Capone using organized crime for his gain was on April 1, 1924. In the book Prohibition Gangsters, it says “April 1, 1924, was election day in Cicero, and Capone

unleashed his mobsters to make sure his allies, the republican candidates, won the vote. Thugs working for Capone kidnapped and beat up Democratic poll workers” (Mappen, 14). Capone used his mob and his relations with “friends in high places” to go from a nobody mobster to the leader of the biggest mob in Chicago.

As shown in Figure 1 Al Capone had close ties with many different politicians and non-politicians/criminals that helped him get away with many illegal crimes and also helped him and his mob become very successful. Without these relationships with these government officials Capone wouldn’t have been able to rise up in the city during the prohibition and become the largest and most successful bootleggers in the entire city of Chicago.
Al Capone created a monopoly of illegal breweries in local towns in Chicago during the 1920s by becoming such a successful bootlegger and with this created a lot of crime. With the help of organized crime and his large mob, Al Capone was able to almost completely control the manufacturing and selling of alcohol in the entire city and also make millions of dollars. “He ruled one of the biggest and most sophisticated criminal operations in the history of the United States, estimated to gross between $12,000,000 and $70,000,000 a year” (Hoffman, 6-7). Capone had many different areas around the city where he distributed his alcohol. One of the major areas of Capone’s bootlegging was in Cicero where he had his large beer monopoly according to the book Organized Crime in Urban Society. On top of the crime Capone had brought to Chicago with his bootlegging and beer monopoly it also created a large rise in crime because of other gangs targeting his breweries. In the Prohibition Gangster’s book, it talks about one event when William McSwiggin, Tom Duffy, and Jim Doherty who were all members of the O’Donnell gang went bar hopping in Cicero where Capone’s beer monopoly was located. “After some amount of drinking, they were emerging from the establishment when all hell broke loose as deadly machine gun fire cut down McSwiggin, Duffy, and Doherty...From the outset suspicion fell on Al Capone. He had a grudge against the O’Donnell gang because it was trying to muscle in on his beer monopoly in Cicero” (Mappen, 18-19). This is just one of hundreds of minor shootings in the Chicago area that were created due to the prohibition and alcohol being bootlegged by Capone.
On top of the minor shootings that took place in Chicago because of Capone and his mob during the 1920s, there was also a rise in mass homicides too. One of the many mass killings and largest mass killings that was organized by Capone and his mob was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. “In a garage on the city’s North Side on February 14, 1929, seven men associated with the Irish gangster George “Bugs” Moran, one of Capone’s longtime enemies, were shot to death by several men dressed as policemen” (First thing in citation). Capone used his control of organized crime in Chicago to execute this mass homicide of seven men from his rival gang. Neither Capone or any of the members of his mob were ever convicted for this massacre. This is due to Capone using he rule over organized crime to work with his “friends in high places” to work his way out of having anybody being found guilty of the massacre. This massacre and rise in mass killings may never had happened if the government wouldn’t have enacted the 18th amendment in the United States.
Although Al Capone was this dangerous bootlegging mob leader who caused corruption in the government and police force and created a rise in crime during the prohibition. He also played a big role in corrupting the people of Chicago too because he became a popular figure that the people respected. In Trust Thy Crooked Neighbor it says that organized crime was a classic example of a “rags to riches” scenario which is why many people of Chicago respected Capone.