Prohibition in the United States

Prohibition created more crime because it was leading to corruption and the “cure” was worse than the original problem (Sifakis 725). The number of crimes increased during the Prohibition which caused organized crime to be very “popular”. Many criminal groups had a regular income of money through illegal actions such as drinking and selling alcohol (Organized Crime and Prohibition 1). Alcohol increased the organized crimes during Prohibition through loopholes in the 18th Amendment, speakeasies, doctor’s prescriptions, and bootlegging.

Bootleg alcohol was one of the main reasons organized crimes began (Organized Crime and Prohibition 1). Bootlegging was when alcohol was brought into the country illegally from outside the borders. Although, sometimes the illegal alcohol was obtained within the United States (Sifakis 725). Organized crime can be defined as unlawful activity for profit on a city, interstate, and even international scale (Beehner 1). The crime rate went up because the profit motivated people to get involved with illegal activities (Organized Crime and Prohibition 1). Prohibition helped organized crimes because, even though alcohol was illegal, it’s availability through these crime groups, gangs, were satisfying the peoples’ want of alcohol (Sifakis 725).

Bootlegging was a major pastime in America especially during the Prohibition. A bootlegger was someone who engaged themselves in illegal alcohol deliveries. The criminals used bootlegging activities as a business to gain as much profit for themselves as a person possibly could gain. They thrived the most during the Prohibition period, January 16, 1920 until the repeal of the 18th Amendment on December 3, 1933. Most of the bootlegged alcohol was brought...

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...ifty-four gallons of methyl alcohol to produce a huge batch of moonshine. This alcohol was sold all over Atlanta and even to an Auburn Avenue nightclub. A man named Eliza Foster went to an Auburn Avenue nightclub and drank a couple shots. A half hour later he dropped over dead. The same night both a man died in his car with a bottle of the same batch next to him and a little old lady died in her rocking chair with a bottle of the bad alcohol lying spilled at her feet. From that bad alcohol, thirteen people died that night with hundreds of other people feeling miserable, sick, and even blind, in the Grady Memorial Hospital. In the end forty-two people had died from the bad alcohol although over five hundred were affected by it (112). After the mass poisonings the scale of legal alcohol went up 51.2 percent in Atlanta (113).