“Crime Battens On Prohibition”

Walter OlsonWriting in the New Yorker on the mystique of the Mob, Adam Gopnik makes a point long familiar here at Cato:The former Mafia prosecutor John Kroger, in his 2008 book, “Convictions,” details his team’s victories against the Mob but admits, with some chagrin, that the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes. Crime battens on prohibition. The lotteries stripped the numbers racket of its appeal; Internet porn took a toll on the prostitution and smut business; easily obtained credit cards robbed the loan sharks of their monopoly. A more permissive society —with gambling, sex, and debt regularized—was a less Mafia ‐​friendly one.In explaining the fall of the once ‐​mighty numbers racket, the near‐​ubiquity of lawful casino gambling might be added to lotteries. Due credit to Kroger and Gopnik, in any event, for not overlooking the less often heralded connection between the rise of a truly mass credit industry and the decline of loansharking rackets, once a key Mob moneymaker and still a major problem in some advanced countriessuch as Japan.On a broader look, the best known example of all is alcohol prohibition, which fueled first thesteep rise of organized crime in the 1920s and then, after Repeal,its decline. Another enormous driver of gang activity, both at homeand abroad, has been the Drug War, which has not yet seen its day of Repeal.Which raises the question: how many of these lessons have tr...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 17, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs