The Neighborhood Outfit: Organized Crime in Chicago Heights

The Neighborhood Outfit: Organized Crime in Chicago Heights

From the slot machine trust of the early 1900s to the prolific Prohibition era bootleggers allied with Al Capone, and for decades beyond, organized crime in Chicago Heights, Illinois, represented a vital component of the Chicago Outfit. Louis Corsino taps interviews, archives, government documents, and his own family's history to tell the story of the Chicago Heights "boys" and their place in the city's Italian American community in the twentieth century. Debunking the popular idea of organized crime as a uniquely Italian enterprise, Corsino delves into the social and cultural forces that contributed to illicit activities. As he shows, discrimination blocked opportunities for Italians' social mobility and the close-knit Italian communities that arose in response to such limits produced a rich supply of social capital Italians used to pursue alternative routes to success that ranged from Italian grocery stores to union organizing to, on occasion, crime.

Country	USA
Author	Louis Corsino
Binding	Kindle Edition
Edition	1st Edition
EISBN	9780252096662
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	University of Illinois Press
Manufacturer	University of Illinois Press
NumberOfPages	184
PublicationDate	2014-11-01
Publisher	University of Illinois Press
ReleaseDate	2014-11-15
Studio	University of Illinois Press

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