FBI history essay, "The FBI and the American Gangster, 1924-1938"
FBI history essay on the Bureau's reform under J. Edgar Hoover and the rise of organized gangs under Prohibition, including the FBI's estimate of 1,300 gangs in Chicago by the mid-1920s.
- Date
- 1924/1938
- Kind
- agency-history
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-11
- Rights
- Federal agency web page; a work of the U.S. government (17 U.S.C. § 105). Embedded photographs are not covered by this record.
The FBI’s undated history essay covers 1924 to 1938. This archive reads its opening sections on the Bureau’s reform and on Prohibition-era crime. The essay says a “rising tide of professional criminals, made richer and bolder by Prohibition, which had turned the nation ‘dry’ in 1920,” and that in Chicago alone “an estimated 1,300 gangs” had spread by the mid-1920s. The figure is the FBI’s estimate, and the page gives no source for it. The essay also describes the Bureau’s 1924 Identification Division and its fingerprint files.
The essay is a federal narrative, not a primary record. It is cited here for what the FBI says about the period, and it is paired in the Capone section with court and Treasury records.
The image shown is the essay’s lead photograph, captioned by the FBI “Mug shot of Al Capone on May 16, 1929”; it was downloaded from the FBI image repository on 12 October 2026, and its date is discussed on its own page.