Emerging Organized Crime in Chicago

Organized crime is now international in scope and unrestricted by geographical borders. Better organized, more sophisticated, and using high-tech equipment the criminals have developed connections with so-called 'traditional organized crime'. This paper examines in detail the wave of organized criminal activity which has developed in Chicago and has now become entrenched through alliances with existing criminal groups.     

Traditional Organized Crime in Chicago

For 78 years the Chicago Outfit or Mob has been the focus of the Chicago Crime Commission's1 efforts to combat organized crime. Indeed, the perception of organized crime in Chicago, as well as much of the city's reputation, stems from the notorious, and often inappropriately glamorized, activities of the Outfit from Al Capone in the 1930s through John DiFronzo in the 1990s. While the Outfit is most certainly still alive, much of the organized criminal activity presently targeting Chicago and its suburbs is perpetrated by new and emerging criminal enterprises. These groups range from local burglary rings to highly sophisticated international criminal organizations headquartered in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America, involved in corporate kidnapping and extortion, murder-for-hire, high-tech crime and drug trafficking. All require public attention and relentless law enforcement scrutiny. This paper deals with traditional organized crime in Chicago. Emerging Organized Crime will be dealt with in a forthcoming paper.     

Psychosocial Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Exposure in Maltreated Adolescents: Assessing More than IPV Occurrence

The majority of research on the psychosocial impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure for children has focused on IPV occurrence. The current study extended this research by examining three dimensions of IPV exposure: frequency, proximity, and severity, and tested whether these dimensions predicted variance in adolescents’ psychosocial problems over-and-above that accounted for by IPV occurrence. Participants included 140 adolescents and their caregivers, who were recruited for an intervention involving maltreated youth placed in out-of-home care. After controlling for IPV occurrence, exposure to community violence, and severity of maltreatment, results indicated a positive association between the multidimensional IPV index and youth report of psychosocial problems. There was also a trend for a positive association between the IPV index and caregiver report of psychosocial problems for boys. The study’s results are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention researchers and child welfare agencies.