Prohibition in the United States

===Crime===
It is difficult to draw conclusions about Prohibition's impact on crime at the national level, as there were no uniform national statistics gathered about crime prior to 1930.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Hall|first=Wayne|date=2010|title=What are the policy lessons of National Alcohol Prohibition in the United States, 1920–1933?|journal=Addiction|language=en|volume=105|issue=7|pages=1164–1173|doi=10.1111/j.1360-0443.2010.02926.x|pmid=20331549|issn=1360-0443}}</ref> It has been argued that [[organized crime]] received a major boost from Prohibition. For example, one study found that organized crime in Chicago tripled during Prohibition.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Chris M.|date=2020-08-24|title=Exogenous Shocks, the Criminal Elite, and Increasing Gender Inequality in Chicago Organized Crime|journal=American Sociological Review|volume=85|issue=5|language=en|pages=895–923|doi=10.1177/0003122420948510|s2cid=222003022|issn=0003-1224|doi-access=free}}</ref> [[American Mafia|Mafia]] groups and other criminal organizations and [[gang]]s had mostly limited their activities to [[prostitution]], [[Illegal gambling|gambling]], and theft until 1920, when organized [[Rum-running|"rum-running" or bootlegging]] emerged in response to Prohibition.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}} A profitable, often violent, [[black market]] for alcohol flourished.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Unintended Consequences|url=https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences|access-date=2021-11-18|website=Prohibition {{!}} Ken Burns {{!}} PBS|language=en|archive-date=October 17, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201017200712/http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences/|url-status=live}}</ref> Prohibition provided a financial basis for organized crime to flourish.<ref>Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States. National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. January 7, 1931</ref> In one study of more than 30 major U.S. cities during the Prohibition years of 1920 and 1921, the number of crimes increased by 24%. Additionally, theft and burglaries increased by 9%, homicides by 13%, assaults and battery rose by 13%, drug addiction by 45%, and police department costs rose by 11.4%. This was largely the result of "black-market violence" and the diversion of law enforcement resources elsewhere. Despite the Prohibition movement's hope that outlawing alcohol would reduce crime, the reality was that the [[Volstead Act]] led to higher crime rates than were experienced prior to Prohibition and the establishment of a black market dominated by criminal organizations.<ref>{{cite book | author =Charles Hanson Towne | title =The Rise and Fall of Prohibition: The Human Side of What the Eighteenth Amendment Has Done to the United States | publisher =Macmillan | year =1923 | location =New York | pages =[https://archive.org/details/risefallofprohib00town/page/159 159]–162 | url =https://archive.org/details/risefallofprohib00town}}</ref>

A 2016 NBER paper showed that South Carolina counties that enacted and enforced prohibition had homicide rates increase by about 30 to 60 percent relative to counties that did not enforce prohibition.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Bodenhorn|first=Howard|date=December 2016 |title=Blind Tigers and Red-Tape Cocktails: Liquor Control and Homicide in Late-Nineteenth-Century South Carolina|journal=NBER Working Paper No. 22980 |doi=10.3386/w22980 |doi-access=free}}</ref> A 2009 study found an increase in homicides in Chicago during Prohibition.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last1=Asbridge|first1=Mark|last2=Weerasinghe|first2=Swarna|date=2009|title=Homicide in Chicago from 1890 to 1930: prohibition and its impact on alcohol- and non-alcohol-related homicides|journal=Addiction|language=en|volume=104|issue=3|pages=355–364|doi=10.1111/j.1360-0443.2008.02466.x|pmid=19207343|issn=1360-0443}}</ref> However, some scholars have attributed the crime during the Prohibition era to increased [[urbanization]], rather than to the criminalization of alcohol use.<ref name="CookMachin2013">{{cite book|title=Lessons from the Economics of Crime: What Reduces Offending?|date= 2013|publisher=[[MIT Press]]|isbn=978-0-262-01961-3|page=56|language=en|quote=Proponents of legalization often draw on anecdotal evidence from the prohibition era to argue that the increase in crime during prohibition occurred directly because of the criminalization of alcohol. Owens (2011), however, offers evidence to the contrary—exploiting state-level variation in prohibition policy, she finds that violent crime trends were better explained by urbanization and immigration, rather than criminalization/decriminalization of alcohol.|first1=Philip J.|last1=Cook|first2=Stephen|last2=Machin|first3=Olivier|last3=Marie|first4=Giovanni|last4=Mastrobuoni}}</ref> In some cities, such as [[New York City]], crime rates decreased during the Prohibition era.<ref name="PinardPagani2000">{{cite book |last1=Pinard |first1=Georges-Franck |last2=Pagani |first2=Linda |title=Clinical Assessment of Dangerousness: Empirical Contributions |year=2000 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JqdKV7t-89EC&pg=PA199 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |language=en |isbn=978-1-139-43325-9 |page=199 |quote=These declines in criminality extended from 1849 to 1951, however, so that it is doubtful that they should be attributed to Prohibition. Crime rates in New York City, too, decreased during the Prohibition period (Willback, 1938). |access-date=October 4, 2018 |archive-date=January 20, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230120200737/https://books.google.com/books?id=JqdKV7t-89EC&pg=PA199 |url-status=live }}</ref> Crime rates overall declined from the period of 1849 to 1951, making crime during the Prohibition period less likely to be attributed to the criminalization of alcohol alone.<ref name="PinardPagani2000"/>{{why|date=June 2018}}<!-- Wouldn't that eliminate urbanisation and make a temporary spike during prohibition more likely to be the cause? -->

[[Mark H. Moore]] states that contrary to popular opinion, "violent crime did not increase dramatically during Prohibition" and that organized crime "existed before and after" Prohibition.<ref name="Moore1989" /> The historian Kenneth D. Rose corroborates historian John Burnham's assertion that during the 1920s "there is no firm evidence of this supposed upsurge in lawlessness" as "no statistics from this period dealing with crime are of any value whatsoever".<ref name="Rose1997">{{cite book |last1=Rose |first1=Kenneth D. |title=American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition |date=1997 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-0-8147-7466-3 |page=45 |language=en}}</ref> [[California State University, Chico]] historian Kenneth D. Rose writes:<ref name="Rose1997"/>
{{Blockquote|Opponents of prohibition were fond of claiming that the Great Experiment had created a gangster element that had unleashed a "crime wave" on a hapless America. The WONPR's Mrs. Coffin Van Rensselaer, for instance, insisted in 1932 that "the alarming crime wave, which had been piling up to unprecedented height" was a legacy of prohibition. But prohibition can hardly be held responsible for inventing crime, and while supplying illegal liquor proved to be lucrative, it was only an additional source of income to the more traditional criminal activities of gambling, loan sharking, racketeering, and prostitution. The notion of the prohibition-induced crime wave, despite its popularity during the 1920s, cannot be substantiated with any accuracy, because of the inadequacy of records kept by local police departments.|sign=|source=}}Along with other economic effects, the enactment and enforcement of Prohibition caused an increase in resource costs. During the 1920s the annual budget of the [[Bureau of Prohibition]] went from $4.4 million to $13.4 million. Additionally, the [[United States Coast Guard|U.S. Coast Guard]] spent an average of $13 million annually on enforcement of prohibition laws.<ref>{{cite book|title=Bureau of Prohibition, Statistics Concerning Intoxicating Liquors|publisher=Government Printing Office|year=1930|location=Washington|page=2}}</ref> These numbers do not take into account the costs to local and state governments.