The Chicago Outfit (also known as the Outfit, the Chicago Mafia, the Chicago Mob, the Chicago crime family, the South Side Gang or the Organization) is an Italian-AmericanMafiacrime family based in Chicago, Illinois, which originated in the city's South Side in 1910. The organization is part of the larger Italian-American Mafia.
Though it has never had a monopoly on organized crime in Chicago, the Outfit has long been the largest, most powerful and most violent criminal organization in Chicago and the Midwest in general. Unlike other Mafia factions such as the Five Families of New York City, the Outfit has been a unified faction since its conception.[9] Its influence at its peak stretched as far as California, Florida and Nevada and it continues to operate throughout the Midwestern United States and Southern Florida, as well as Las Vegas and other parts of the Southwestern United States. Heightened law enforcement attention and general attrition have led to its gradual decline since the late 20th century, though it continues to be one of the major and most active organized crime groups in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Midwestern region.
Robert Hugh Farley. "Investigations of Child Pornography in the United States". virtusonline.org. Retrieved April 24, 2024. From 1988 to 1992 the producers of child pornography in the United States found that as a result of aggressive law enforcement, the commercial production and distribution of child sexual abuse images became more difficult, expensive, and very risky. Additionally the reproduction of the child abuse images by child molesters became equally difficult and expensive. Even "The Chicago Outfit" that controlled most of the adult book stores in the United States bowed out of distributing child pornography by finding more customers and a lesser amount of law enforcement scrutiny in selling the other legal varieties of commercial pornography.