Organized Crime In Chicago Research Articles

Book Review: Al Capone’s Beer Wars: A complete history of organized crime in Chicago during prohibitionScarface and the untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the battle for Chicago

Book Review: Al Capone’s Beer Wars: A complete history of organized crime in Chicago during prohibitionScarface and the untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the battle for Chicago

Trust Thy Crooked Neighbor

Bureaucratic and patrimonial theories of organized crime tend to miss the history and mobility of crime groups integrating into and organizing with legitimate society. The network property of multiplexity—when more than one type of relationship exists between a pair of actors—offers a theoretical and empirical inroad to analyzing overlapping relationships of seemingly disparate social spheres. Using the historical case of organized crime in Chicago and a unique relational database coded from more than 5,000 pages of archival documents, we map the web of multiplex relationships among bootleggers, politicians, union members, businessmen, families, and friends. We analyze the overlap of criminal, personal, and legitimate networks containing 1,030 individuals and 3,726 mutual dyads between them. Multiplexity is rare in these data: only 10 percent of the mutual dyads contain multiplex ties. However, results from bivariate exponential random graph models demonstrate that multiplexity is a relevant structural property binding the three networks together. Even among our sample of criminals, we find dependencies between the criminal and personal networks and the criminal and legitimate networks. Although not pervasive, multiplexity glued these worlds of organized crime together above and beyond the personalities of famous gangsters, ethnic homophily, and other endogenous network processes.

Organized crime in Chicago: beyond the Mafia

This book provides a comprehensive sociological explanation for the emergence and continuation of organized crime in Chicago. Tracing the roots of political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in Chicago and other large American cities, Robert M. Lombardo challenges the dominant belief that organized crime in America descended directly from the Sicilian Mafia. According to this widespread alien conspiracy theory, organized crime evolved in a linear fashion beginning with the Mafia in Sicily, emerging in the form of the Black Hand in America's immigrant colonies, and culminating in the development of the Cosa Nostra in America's urban centers. Looking beyond this Mafia paradigm, this volume argues that the development of organized crime in Chicago and other large American cities was rooted in the social structure of American society. Specifically, Lombardo ties organized crime to the emergence of machine politics in America's urban centers. From nineteenth-century vice syndicates to the modern-day Outfit, Chicago's criminal underworld could not have existed without the blessing of those who controlled municipal, county, and state government. These practices were not imported from Sicily, Lombardo contends, but were bred in the socially disorganized slums of America where elected officials routinely franchised vice and crime in exchange for money and votes. This book also traces the history of the African-American community's participation in traditional organized crime in Chicago and offers new perspectives on the organizational structure of the Chicago Outfit, the traditional organized crime group in Chicago.

Fighting Organized Crime

This article reviews the history of law enforcement efforts against traditional organized crime in Chicago. While the historical record is replete with examples of the relationship between corrupt police officials and Chicago’s underworld, little has been written about the often valiant efforts directed at the Capone Syndicate and the Chicago Outfit by the law enforcement community. This article seeks to fill this void. Reviewing mainly primary sources, this article argues that police corruption was the direct result of political direction and not the concerted acts of the Chicago Police Department or individual acts of law enforcement officers. These findings have important implications for the study of organized crime and further clarify the role of machine politics as a direct cause of organized crime in American society.

Matthew J. Luzi: The boys in Chicago Heights: the forgotten crew of the Chicago Outfit

Matthew J. Luzi is an arbitration administrator employed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and a member of the American Arbitration Association. His book, The Boys in Chicago Heights: The Forgotten Crew of the Chicago Outfit, is the story of one of the least known factions of traditional organized crime in Chicago. The term traditional organized crime refers to those groups commonly referred to as the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the crime syndicate, and the mob. As Chicago’s traditional organized crime group, the Chicago Outfit was once organized into five sections or “Street Crews” which included the four Chicago neighborhoods of Taylor Street, Grand Avenue, the North Side, and Twenty-sixth Street, and the southern suburb of Chicago Heights. The book is broken down into seven chapters. The first chapter provides a history of the settlement of Chicago Heights from the 1830s to the beginning of Prohibition. Chapter two describes the bootlegging gangs that were operating in Chicago Heights during Prohibition. Chapter three describes the incorporation of Chicago Heights into the Capone Syndicate. Chapters four, five, and six describe the activities of the Chicago Heights Crew as an important component of traditional organized crime in Chicago. Finally, chapter eight describes the demise of the Chicago Heights Crew as a result of law enforcement efforts. The author’s interest in Chicago Heights began as a child. Growing up in Chicago Heights he heard stories about the “old days” when his great grandmother cooked for her brother and other “big-shots” in the “syndicate.” Luzi also heard stories about Al Capone, Prohibition, and the Chicago Heights “Boys.” As an adult, he tried to learn more about the Chicago Heights Crew, but found little written material. This absence of material caused him to begin a 25 year quest to write the story of organized crime in Chicago Heights and in particular its relationship to the Chicago Outfit. Trends Organ Crim (2013) 16:358–360 DOI 10.1007/s12117-013-9196-2

The Black Mafia: African-American organized crime in Chicago 1890-1960

The historical role of African-Americans in organized crime in the UnitedStates has been greatly ignored by the academic community. What researchthat does exist argues that black Americans played a minor role in theethnic gambling and vice industries that existed in many American citiesat the beginning of the Twentieth Century. This view is supported by the alien conspiracy theory, which argues that the participation of African-Americansand other minorities in syndicated vice and crime followed the decline oftraditional Italian American organized crime groups. This research arguesthat sophisticated African-American organized crime groups in Chicago existedindependently of Italian American organized crime and that African-Americans eventually played an important role in the activities of the Chicago Outfit,the traditional Italian American organized group in Chicago.

Traditional Organized Crime in Chicago

For 78 years the Chicago Outfit or Mob has been the focus of the Chicago Crime Commission's1 efforts to combat organized crime. Indeed, the perception of organized crime in Chicago, as well as much of the city's reputation, stems from the notorious, and often inappropriately glamorized, activities of the Outfit from Al Capone in the 1930s through John DiFronzo in the 1990s. While the Outfit is most certainly still alive, much of the organized criminal activity presently targeting Chicago and its suburbs is perpetrated by new and emerging criminal enterprises. These groups range from local burglary rings to highly sophisticated international criminal organizations headquartered in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America, involved in corporate kidnapping and extortion, murder-for-hire, high-tech crime and drug trafficking. All require public attention and relentless law enforcement scrutiny. This paper deals with traditional organized crime in Chicago. Emerging Organized Crime will be dealt with in a forthcoming paper.

Asian Gangs and Asian Organized Crime In Chicago

The primary purpose of this paper has been to conduct a preliminary examination into the existence of, and the extent of activity of Asian street gangs and Asian organized Crime in the city of Chicago. Information was acquired through field study, personal interviews, direct observation, official reports, and government documents. The author has defined and distinguished between criminal gangs and organized crime groups. Links between Asian street gangs and Asian organized criminal groups in Chicago have been examined. In addition, relationships between Asian criminal groups in Chicago, other U.S. cities, and international crime groups have been highlighted. Suggestions directed toward more effective investigation procedures and policy decisions have been recommended.

Crime and Ethnic Minorities in America: A Bibliographic Essay

C ERTAIN ethnic groups, in particular the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Negroes, have not only been subjected to traditional American racial biases but also to the charge of innate criminality. Indeed, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries police records disclosed a heavy incidence of crime among minority groups which seemed to substantiate this allegation.' In addition, these same records showed an inordinate involvement by such groups in organized crime. A late 1920 survey ofthe leaders of organized crime in Chicago, for instance, revealed that 31 per cent were of Italian descent, 20 per cent of Irish parentage, 20 per cent Jewish, and 12 per cent Negro; none were native whites of native white parents.