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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.

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CHOICE Review

In today's discourse, organized crime (OC) generally means crime that is organized. This tent is big enough to include Russian gangsters, Colombian drug cartels, Jamaican posses, and Chinese triads. To Lombardo, a professor of criminal justice at Loyola Univ. Chicago, an additional element must be present: criminal subordination of the political process. In the 1880s, Italians arrived in the Windy City in great numbers. However, only with Prohibition was the development of a powerful, ethnic-led criminal enterprise possible. Al Capone's crew was mostly neither Italian nor Sicilian, except for his personal security. A few decades later, Neapolitans and Sicilians had become the substantial leaders of OC. The political process suffered as criminal enterprises battled or bought police and local officials. Lombardo argues persuasively that OC is not a foreign deviance implanted by will but rather a condition made possible by circumstances of the place. By the 1980s, OC in Chicago had diminished because of federal anti-mob efforts, urban renewal, middle classism, and the decline of OC neighborhood influences. Photos of Eliot Ness and "the Untouchables" are found in the picture section. A map of the five critical OC neighborhoods would have been welcome. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. D. McCrie John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

Booklist Review

Who first organized crime in Chicago? According to former Chicago policeman and professor of criminal justice Lombardo, it was not Italians. Corrupt aldermen and ward bosses had a network of neighborhood saloon keepers, prostitutes, and bookies delivering illicit goods and services in place in the 1870s, long before a wave of Sicilians and Neapolitans immigrated to the city. The politicians' primary aim was to finance their political power, but everything changed during Prohibition. Rich with bootlegging cash, gang bosses unseated the politicians as the lords of crime. Breaking their boundary agreements, ruthless and greedy mobsters then began a period of open warfare. Lombardo recounts more than 100 years of the rise and decline of various criminal organizations, including the Syndicate, the Forty-Two Gang, and the Outfit, in this history explaining the role of organized crime in Chicago. Because Chicago crime is depicted in many popular books and movies, this history will find eager readers everywhere.--Roche, Rick Copyright 2010 Booklist

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Robert M. Lombardo is an associate professor of criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago and a former Chicago Police officer. He is the author of The Black Hand: Terror by Letter in Chicago.