The Prohibition Er Al Capone And The Prohibition Era

Al Capone 's violent rise to power in Chicago and the media attention it brought made him a lasting figure of the prohibition era and organized crime in general.

On January 17, 1920, Prohibition began in the United States with the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution making it illegal to manufacture, transport, or sell alcohol. Despite these bans, there was still a very high demand for it from the public. This created an atmosphere that tolerated crime as a means to provide liquor to the public, even among the police and city politicians. During the Prohibition Era the murder rate rose from 6.8 per 100,000 persons to 9.7 [61]. During the first three months following the Eighteenth Amendment, a half of milling dollars in bonded whiskey

It provides for extended criminal penalties for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. Violation of the act is punishable by up to 20 years in prison per count, up to $25,000 and the violator must forfeit all properties attainted while violating the RICO Act. [61] The RICO Act has proven to be a very powerful weapon, because it attacks the entire corrupt entity instead of individuals who can easily be replaced with other organized crime members.[3] Between 1981 and 1992, 23 bosses from around the country were convicted under the law while between 1981 and 1988, 13 underbosses and 43 captains were convicted.[24] Over 1000 crime family figures had been convicted by 1990. [61] While this significantly crippled many Mafia families around the country, the most powerful families continued to dominate crime in their territories, even if the new laws put more mobsters in jail and made it harder to operate. With Sammy Gravano agreeing to cooperate with the FBI and turn state 's evidence in 1991, he helped the FBI convict top Mafia leaders in New York. Although not the first Mafia member to testify against his peers, such a powerful mobster agreeing to do so set a precedent for waves of mobsters thereafter to break the code of silence to do the same; giving up information and testifying in exchange for

It also emerged in other areas of the East Coast of the United States and several other major metropolitan areas (such as New Orleans[1]) during the late 19th century and early 20th Century following waves of Italian immigration, especially from Sicily and other regions of Southern Italy. It has its roots in the Sicilian Mafia, but is a separate organization in the United States. Neapolitan, Calabrian, and other Italian criminal groups in America, as well as independent Italian-American criminals, eventually merged with Sicilian Mafiosi to create the modern pan-Italian Mafia in North America. Today, the American Mafia cooperates in various criminal activities with the Sicilian Mafia and other Italian organized crime groups, such as the Camorra in Naples, 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, and Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia. The most important unit of the American Mafia is that of a "family", as the various criminal organizations that make up the Mafia are known. Despite the name of "family" to describe the various units, they are not familial