Crime Rate of the 1920's

The 1920's, though many may try to call it a progressive era of the United States, it was really the start of years of corruptions. With the mixture of the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol (Doc. B) and the crash of the stock market, the 1920's became the home of organized crime. People ethics greatly dropped and their fear of immigrants increased during these hard times. The 1920's were dreadful years as crime rates increased by 24% from 1920 to only 1921. (Crime Rate)

The 1920's was known, famously, because of its developments in different arts, music, and love for sports. With the invention of the radio, people became more in touch with the world. It was their TV, their source to an enjoyable time, their source to news, and their source to sports. Many new kinds of music became popular, like jazz and the blues. (The 1920) The US developed a love for dance. Women like the flapper became popular. These women were what we consider tramps. They wore revealing dresses, smoke, and drank a lot. (Doc D) A flapper thought, with the 19th Amendment and their right to vote (Our Doc...), they could go against society and become what culture didn't want it to be.

Another thought that should come to mind, during the 1920's, are gangsters. This era was home to Al "Scarface" Capone, "Bugs" Moran, "Dutch" Schultz, and many others (1920s Gangster...). With the prohibition of alcohol, many people turned to drug traffickers to obtain their alcohol. Gangs found this as an easy way to make money and started the art of bootlegging. Al Capone for example, by 1927 (the year he was arrested), had an income of $105 million dollars (Al Capone...). This was the start of organized crime. Police had to work twice as hard to stop crime and to try and end bootlegging. Your source to alcohol became known as speakeasies, bars hidden in basements and rundown buildings. Alcohol was snuck from Canada, through border patrol. Crime rose through the roof and could not be stopped. Then on October 24, 1929 Black Tuesday occurred, and the stock market crashed. Thus starting the Great Depression in the United States, during which people lost their jobs and money, and started to bootleg as a source of income. This cause some of the most crime the US has ever dealt with.

With all of these problems, we, as a nation had fear, and as history says we always fear the unknown, and at this time they were the foreigners. People were scared of them, not because they did anything wrong, but because they smelled different, talked different, ate different things, and mostly because they had ideas we did not like. Many foreigners had different ideas about government, as some believed in social Darwinism, while others wanted a communist state and some desired anarchy. They had many other ideas but they were all frowned upon. Individual's developed a higher sense of nationalism and established a higher sense of racism.