State legislatures in the Northeast and Midwest pass laws preventing police from pursuing reported violations of the alcohol ban. Organized crime accounts for a large increase in illegal bars, known as speakeasies. In 1927, nine prominent New York lawyers form the “Voluntary Committee of Lawyers” to repeal the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment. They argue that the public’s disregard for Prohibition threatens to undermine respect for the U.S. legal system.