Robert M. Lombardo

The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy: A reassessment of the CAPS program

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), the largest community policing program in the USA.Design/methodology/approach – The data for this research come from the 1993‐1994 Citizen Survey of the Longitudinal Evaluation of Chicagos Community Policing Program. Referred to as the CAPS Prototype Panel Survey, the data were obtained from the Inter‐university Consortium for Political and Social Science Research. Both ordinary least square and log linear regression were used to analyze the data.Findings – The findings indicate that people living in the CAPS prototype districts had significantly higher levels of satisfaction with police fighting crime than people living in matched comparison areas who were not subject to the CAPS program. The findings also indicate that the residents of the CAPS prototype communities were only marginally more satisfied with police keeping order than those living in non‐CAPS communities.Research implications/limitations – Th...

The Social Organization of Organized Crime in Chicago

Based upon the analysis of interview data, this research argues that neither the bureaucratic nor the patrimonial models of complex organizations adequately explains traditional organized crime as found in Chicago today. This paper suggests that the open systems perspective, and in particular the contingency model, better explains the true nature of organized crime. In addition, this research describes the organizational structure of the Outfit, the traditional organized crime group in Chicago, and argues that positions exist within the Outfit for made guys, Outfit Guys, and connected members. In addition, this research argues that the Outfit has an organized public made up of gamblers, thieves, and wanna-bes who provide support for the activities of the organization and recruits for the Outfit itself.

The Black Hand: A Study in Moral Panic

This analysis reviews the history of Black Hand extortion in the City of Chicago and argues that the societal response to Black Hand activity constituted a moral panic. In addition, special emphasis is given to the institutional legacy of societys response to Black Hand crime. It is argued that the moral panic created by the Black Hand contributed to the social construction of the alien conspiracy theory, which has dominated beliefs about the Mafia and organised crime for almost a century

Public reputation and organised crime: explicating the relationship between racket subcultures and informal social control

This paper examines the influence of traditional organised crime on informal social control in community areas that once had a presence of organised crime while controlling for neighbourhood attachment, satisfaction with the police, social and organisational ties, and tolerance of deviance. The data comes from the Community Survey of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. The comparative quantitative method was used to analyse the data. The findings indicate that neighbourhoods with an historic reputation for organised crime can report higher levels of informal social control when compared to current racket areas in the city of Chicago. These findings have important implications for the study of deviance. Not only do they suggest that criminals can play an important role in controlling street crime, the findings also suggest that this public reputation remains long after organised crime activities have ceased in the area.

The Chicago Outfit Alien Conspiracy or Machine Politics

This essay studies the Outfit, the traditional organized crime group in the city of Chicago. The alien conspiracy theory argues that organized crime in Chicago and other American cities descended from the Sicilian Mafia. This article challenges the alien conspiracy theory arguing that the Chicago Outfit is better understood by the ethnic succession argument, which holds that organized crime is explained by Merton’s strain theory. Additionally, it is argued that while Merton’s theory is sufficient to explain the emergence of traditional organized crime, its continuation can only be explained by the existence of racket subcultures in American society.

Fighting Organized Crime: A History of Law Enforcement Efforts in Chicago

This article reviews the history of law enforcement efforts against traditional organized crime in Chicago. While the historical record is replete with examples of the relationship between corrupt police officials and Chicago’s underworld, little has been written about the often valiant efforts directed at the Capone Syndicate and the Chicago Outfit by the law enforcement community. This article seeks to fill this void. Reviewing mainly primary sources, this article argues that police corruption was the direct result of political direction and not the concerted acts of the Chicago Police Department or individual acts of law enforcement officers. These findings have important implications for the study of organized crime and further clarify the role of machine politics as a direct cause of organized crime in American society.

The honored society: the history of Italy’s most powerful Mafia

Shklovsky and Steinhardt developed radically other ways of reading and writing through their encounters with the secret police, Vatulescu makes the argument that these were not merely literary concerns but practices and strategies that were in fact tactics of survival, camouflage, distancing, remembrance and poetic justice, among other things (193). This is a timely piece of distinguished scholarship that is justly deserving of its significant accolades.

Can community policing increase residents’ informal social control? Testing the impact of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy

Abstract This study examines whether community policing can build informal social control. Specifically, this paper assesses the impact of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) in Chicago neighborhoods. The data for this research are drawn from both the Community Survey of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) and the CAPS Prototype Panel Survey. Bivariate and multivariate methods are used to analyze data gathered from 8782 residents nested within 343 neighborhood clusters. Initially, community policing was found to increase informal social control, but this effect was rendered non-significant after controlling for theoretically and empirically relevant variables. Several social (dis)organization variables, as well as satisfaction with policing services, yielded significant effects in a multilevel regression model. Further analysis found that the community policing effect on informal social control was mediated through satisfaction with the police. These findings indicate indirect support for the ability of community policing to build informal social control and suggest that general satisfaction with the police is important to neighborhood crime control strategies.

Organizational Approaches to Drug Law Enforcement by Local Police Departments in the United States: Specialized Drug Units and Participation in Multi-Agency Drug Task Forces

This paper examines the factors associated with the decision of local police departments in the United States to operate specialized drug units or to participate in multi-jurisdictional drug task forces. Combining data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) Survey, the 2000 Census, and the Uniform Crime Report, we use both bivariate and multivariate methods to conduct the analysis. The findings indicate that county-level agencies, those with other formalized drug control efforts, high levels of violent crime, high degrees of task specialization and formalization, and high proportions of the resident population accounted for by renters were more likely to operate drug units, participate in multi-agency drug task forces, and allocate more officers per capita to these efforts.