A negative effect of prohibition was that it generated a rise in crime, as many criminals wanted to sell alcohol ilegally.
Explanation:
Although many people believe that prohibition was an absolute failure, the fact is that during the decade of the 1920s the consumption of alcohol decreased by half, and remained below previous levels well into the 1940s, suggesting that socialized a good part of the population in habits of sobriety, at least temporarily.
But it also had negative side effects, and was losing support progressively. Alcohol continued to be produced clandestinely and also clandestinely imported from neighboring countries, causing a considerable rise in organized crime. There were numerous cases where citizens bought liquor massively during the last weeks of the year 1919, before the law came into force on January 16, 1920, to meet their own consumption: although the law prevented the supply of alcohol, the demand had not disappeared.
The persistence of the demand for alcoholic beverages stimulated the manufacture and sale of liquors, which became an important clandestine industry; the illegality of this practice caused the alcohol thus produced to acquire high prices on the black market, attracting important criminal gangs to it. A good example of this was Al Capone, and other heads of the American Mafia that earned millions of dollars through trafficking and clandestine sales, expanding their criminal activities to almost throughout the country.
Many of the most serious crimes of the 1920s, including robbery and murder, were the direct result of the clandestine alcohol business that operated during Prohibition. Capone himself came to directly influence several neighborhoods of the city of Chicago to be allowed to continue his illicit business in exchange for bribes or threats, while his gang (along with dozens of others) fought violently with each other throughout the American territory to control the very lucrative traffic of alcohol.
