Question: How did the 18th amendment proliferate the expansion of organized crime, and what effects did this have on American Society?
Arrested bootleggers at the Detroit police station (Lerner)
Many have heard the story of infamous gangster Al Capone, a mafia boss in Chicago who was involved with criminal activities from bootlegging to gambling to murder. Despite all these activities, he was famously arrested and convicted for tax evasion. What caused leaders like these to gain power and control? In one word: prohibition. Often viewed as a catastrophic failure, the passing of the 18th Amendment fostered a culture that allowed the rise of organized crime in which law enforcement officers were paid off or unable to do anything. As a result, people lost trust in law enforcement and the laws themselves and were forced to live in fear, and the negative effects of the amendment are still around today.
Organized crime before prohibition was not like the organized crime we know today. Typically, criminal groups referred to as “gangs” participated in petty theft and other illegal activities they could be hired for. Gangs did not have the centralization and organization of criminal groups after prohibition, and they often fought rival gangs for “turf,” a slang word for territory in which the gang operates in. Part of the reason that gangs grew in size and power was because of protection offered by political leaders. The most well known cases of this are from the Tammany Hall scandal, where political leaders in New York hired gang members to do illegal work for them, usually intimidation. In Oliver E. Allen's book that exposes Tammany Hall corruption, The Tiger, he mentions how one leader, Walsh, recruited low-income neighborhoods into “the Spartan Alliance,” essentially a gang. After the formation of the gang, Walsh had considerable success in Tammany Hall as his gang would “forcibly remove the opposition and dominate the proceedings,” eventually leading to his election (Allen 55). In the early 1900’s, people began wondering how to get rid of these organizations. Many thought that the Prohibition movement, just beginning to get moving, would help eradicate these gangs since many centered their criminal activities and meeting in saloons. People soon began equating drinking with saloons, which meant they related drinking to other notoriety. Thus, the 18th amendment was passed. As we are about to see, however, the amendment had complete opposite effects from its intentions.
In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment took effect, which caused organized crime to become more business-like and have larger spheres of influence. The sale, distribution, and even buying of alcohol became illegal, and many wondered how this amendment was even passed. People saw how alcohol broke apart families, destroyed people, decreased productivity, and the saloons it was sold in were places of criminal activity. As a result, the 18th amendment quickly gained enough support to be ratified in 1919. Even though it had been ratified, many opposed the amendment. The most vehemently opposed (and the ones with the least power in government) were blue collar immigrants. This high opposition to the unpopular law is what allowed organized crime to gain traction. Though now illegal, people did not want to give up drinking, and gangs quickly realized the potential money to be made from illegal alcohol distribution, known as “bootlegging.” Saloons turned into “speakeasies,” illegal taverns typically guarded and ran by gang members. Edward D. Sullivan quoted Al Capone as saying “Somebody had to throw liquor on that thirst. Why not me?” (Sullivan 111). The demand for alcohol was extremely high, and gangs such as Al Capone’s turned considerable profits. To avoid criminal charges, gangs began hiring accountants and economists to launder their money. The groups also put local politicians and the police force on their payroll, bribing them to look the other way. Organized crime was starting to become a business, and a very profitable one at that. As syndicates and mafias emerged and expanded, so did violence. It was not uncommon for rival groups to gun each other down in the streets. Police and politicians were essentially powerless as mafias had control over high ranking officials in both sections. To recap, the passage of the 18th amendment did not mean that people no longer wanted to drink; it meant that people still want alcohol only they have to buy it illegally. As local gangs stepped up to the plate, they began making insane profits, which caused the gangs to become more organized and they started paying law enforcement to not get involved, which only skyrocketed their profits more. This problem of mafias and syndicates did not reach a major decline until the 1970’s, more than 35 years after the end of prohibition.
Another unintended effect of the 18th amendment was the economic decline. Not to mention all of the jobs lost in taverns and breweries, the sale of alcohol provided a large part of government tax income. In fact, according to Michael Lerner of PBS, “almost 75% of the [New York’s] revenue was derived from liquor taxes” (Lerner). Once prohibition hit, all of those taxes stopped. Criminal groups, however, did not pay taxes, leaving the government in an economic decline. The government lost even more money trying to enforce the laws. The only law passed to support the amendment was the Volstead Act, which provided an explanation of intoxicating liquors and the punishments for breaking the amendment, including jail. As a result of this, jails began to overflow, so much that courts began instituting the plea bargain to clear their courtrooms (Lerner). People began to mistrust the laws that made a crime out of something they’ve been doing for years before. Even worse than their mistrust in laws was the people’s mistrust in law enforcement, for two reasons. The first was that many officers were “apparently willing to abandon entirely the enforcement of other provisions of the Constitution” to enforce the amendment (Graydon 14). People saw that prohibition agents and police would use Constitutionally illegal methods to incriminate bootleggers, which made them start to fear them. The other, more prevalent, reason was because the police were paid off by mafias. People saw the enforcement as useless since gangs and illegal alcohol was rampant in cities. The effect of this was “undermined public trust in law enforcement for the duration of the era” mingled with fear of the mafia and contempt for the government (Lerner). Even today, people are combating corruption in the police force. National assistance in helping cities fight organized crime did not even begin until after prohibition ended. The first federal law against organized crime (Interference with commerce by threats of violence (Section 1951)) was passed in 1934. Prohibition did not end organized crime, unfortunately, and the gangs found other methods of procuring money, mostly in drug trafficking. Though mafias and memberships declined slowly after the repeal of the amendment, it wasn't until the 1970’s passage of the RICO act and the cleaning out of the FBI that organized crime began to decline (The Demise of the Mafia). Though there are still major gangs and racketeering groups, they do not have the same influence on government or law enforcement that mafias had in the prohibition era.
The loss of trust in public officials and law enforcement by the citizens of the United States caused fear to spread. People knew that the mafia was ruthless and could easily kill someone and get away with it, and they feared the power that the criminals had. Local politics were highly affected by the gangs, who stuffed ballots and intimidated voters and politicians alike. This created a community of fear in the States, especially in cities like Chicago and New York, which were run by the mafia. However, the public couldn’t rid themselves of the mafia because they provided the alcohol which was now illegal. They relied on the bootlegged liquor the mafia sold to them at prices exceedingly higher than ever before, funding their illegal business and allowing them to maintain power. Besides controlling local elections, “organized criminals have and may penetrate the energy and other strategic sectors of the economy,” causing the fear of potentially losing a job or having to work for the mafia as they expanded their business (Finklea 21). The mafia’s method of gaining power is similar to dictators: they rise to power under the pretense of helping the public, then use fear to keep their control. Eventually, the mafia became semi-unified under a panel of bosses, which allowed them to expand even further, a necessity to keep their organized crime going after prohibition ended. They moved to loan sharking and trafficking of humans and drugs, and took control of many labor unions to keep their illegal business running. A real crackdown on organized crime started in the 1960’s and the passage of the 1970 RICO law gave law enforcement a broad definition of organized crime such that they were now able to incriminate many of the gangs they weren’t able to before. However, mafias and organized crime have not been stopped and only slowed down. The Five Families that controlled New York during the Prohibition Era are still around, only with less influence than they had during this corrupt era. However, the effect that the mafia had on society, namely fear, fueled their power and influence over the common citizens. The people’s distrust of politicians was more widespread and carried on long after mafia influence declined, especially now with the many elites that may have been involved with Jeffery Epstein’s supposed sex trafficking ring. In essence, organized crime not only hurts the economy and politics, but affects the daily lives of citizens as mafias took over their jobs, labor unions, or cities.
The effects of the explosion of organized crime during the 1920’s are still felt today. Though the mafia may not have control over cities and politicians anymore, organized criminal groups are prevalent throughout the states and the world. Prohibition gave gangs the profits and control they needed to expand their criminal activities internationally. According to Finklea, organized criminal groups are involved with activities such as human and drug trafficking, which affects society’s productivity and morality, cyberspace fraud, which can cause large financial losses for people who fall into the scam, and could even be involved with trading information to terrorist groups or foreign nations, which is a threat to national security (Finklea 21). Before prohibition, gangs operated locally; now, they are worldwide. However, steps have been taken to control and eventually stop the illicit groups, such as the RICO act and the cleaning out of corrupt politicians and law enforcement agents. People began to trust law enforcement more as they began to crack down on organized crime. Now, the daily effects of organized criminal activity are minimal, but pose a threat to the nation at large in the long run.
Movies such as The Godfather portray the mafia life and how brutal it was. The effects that organized crime had on the nation, however, is even more brutal. The prohibition era allowed for the rise of organized crime since people were willing to buy alcohol illegally and mafias grew larger in size and influence. Many politicians and law enforcement officers were paid off, leaving the public to distrust both due to their corruption. As organized crime grew, fear spread with them since they used violence and intimidation to make their ends meet. People were stuck fearing the mafia, and had no one to help them since the people in power also worked with the mafia. The feeling of distrust towards law enforcement and political officials has remained since then. Organized crime has also remained, even with national efforts to eradicate it in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, organized crime has turned to even more criminal activities such as human trafficking and intelligence sharing. Organized crime is still a national threat to security, and it all started with the 18th amendment to the Constitution.
Works Cited
Allen, Oliver E., The Tiger, 1993
https://archive.org/details/tigerrisefalloft00alle/page/252/mode/2up?q=ballots
Demise of the Mafia, History.com editors, February 22, 2019, https://www.history.com/topics/
crime/the-demise-of-the-mafia#:~:text=Starting%20in%20the%20later%20part,its%20
war%20against%20the%20Mafia.&text=Additionally%2C%20Mafia%20membership%
20in%20the,became%20more%20assimilated%20into%20society.
Finklea, Kristin M., Organized Crime in the United States: Trends and Issues for Congress,
December 22, 2010, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40525.pdf
Graydon, Joseph S., Address Before the Commonwealth Club of Cincinnati, January 27,
1922, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hw1zdk&view=1up&seq=3
Lerner, Michael, Unintended Consequences of Prohibition, PBS,
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-
consequences/#:~:text=Bootleggers%20quickly%20discovered%20that%20running,pe_
rfect%20front%20for%20their%20trade.&text=As%20the%20trade%20in%20illegal,eff_
ects%20of%20drinking%20tainted%20liquor.
Organized Crime and Federal Legislation, http://www.organized-crime.de/OCLAWS.htm
Sullivan, Edward D., Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime, June 1929,
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015014153905&view=1up&seq=10&q1=p
ublic%20demand
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