Decision to Reshape Public Morality Results in Explosion of Criminality
In 1920, America enacted Prohibition, a bold moral policing experiment that turned out to be a disastrous decision. Until then, American organized crime as the term is understood today was relatively minuscule. While city gangs existed, they were made up of street hoods whose reach and influence seldom stretched beyond a few city blocks.
That changed dramatically, starting on January 16th, 1920, with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, banning the manufacture, transport, or sale of alcohol. Declaring alcohol illegal did not reduce public demand for booze. What it did was alter societal attitudes, and create an environment of widespread tolerance of crime in order to provide the public with the booze it wanted.
By making alcohol illegal, Prohibition took a major American industry that had operated legally until then, and gifted it – along with its enormous and now untaxed revenue – to criminals. Relatively well regulated (and taxed) enterprises that had operated the American alcohol industry were driven out of business, to be replaced by organized crime.
Just like drugs today, the profits from illegal alcohol were astronomical. Overnight, bootlegging became irresistible to criminals across America. Their task was made easier by much of the public, as well as many cops and politicians, who did not see the sale or consumption of alcohol as particularly venal or morally blameworthy. Illegal alcohol’s profits enabled organized crime to increase its other illicit activities, such as racketeering, prostitution, drugs, gun-running, and more. The profits also enabled organized crime to lavishly bribe politicians, officials, cops, and judges, and corrupt America’s political and criminal justice systems to failed state levels.
It was a huge boost to organized crime in general, and to Italian organized crime in particular. In Prohibition’s world, Italian gangsters were particularly well-positioned to prosper, because they were set apart from other ethnic criminals by their links to the Italian and Sicilian mafia. Thanks to those Old Country connections, ethnic Italian criminals in the US could draw upon a tradition of sophisticated, hierarchical, and disciplined criminal organizations. In addition to an effective model, they also had access to experienced personnel who could readily duplicate the Old Country’s system in the US. By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, modern organized crime, and the Italian American mafia had become well established and well nigh ineradicably. They remain with us to this day.
