The Chicago Outfit

The Chicago Outfit, also known as “the Outfit,” “the Chicago Mob,” and “the Chicago Mafia” is an Italian-American organized crime Family based in Chicago, Illinois. 

What eventually became known, simply, as “The Outfit” started out in the early 1920s as a sprawling multi-ethnic hodgepodge of loosely formed criminal gangs comprised of young fledgling hoodlums and racketeers, bootleggers, leg-breakers, labor union goons, gamblers, contract killers and other anti-social characters that formed Chicago’s overall criminal underworld. They started out as rival gangs competing for control over Chicago’s lucrative turf and vast criminal pie. During Prohibition, the city became notorious for hundreds and hundreds of gangland murders and daily street warfare. 

But by the end of Prohibition in 1933, whoever hadn’t already been bumped off eventually either fell by the wayside or joined up to form one massive and streamlined criminal syndicate under the notorious “Scarface” Al Capone, blending these former criminal competitors into a monolithic criminal giant. And any lingering hoodlum malcontents who didn’t fall into line were quickly killed off, one by one. By the time the gunsmoke cleared, the “Chicago Syndicate” had been born.