To me the Mafia, or what it used to be, isn't something you join because you think it's going to be this glorious luxurious life. You join because it's what you believe in, it's in your blood figuratively speaking. Anyone who joins because they think it's equivalent to utopia, these are the types that will flip at the first sight of handcuffs when things get hard.
You don’t really “join†so much as the set of circumstances choose you. For a lot of guys it’s in their blood literally speaking and they spend their entire lives surrounded by that life. And even then after being normalized your entire life what you actually get involved in is like a frog in boiling water. You do small little things and then a little more and a little more etc. Usually from when you are a little kid. And it used to be you needed to get straightened out to keep the wolves away. “Joining†is less of a choice than it sounds. Some kid from Mississippi doesn’t just get to say “hey I think this is for me and I’m going to move to Arthur Avenue to give it a shot.†It don’t work like that. You do criminal stuff and you WILL run into problems. If you are white in the northeast you don’t have a lot of options. You get on record with someone and kick up in order to deal with those problems. Or just as common from my experience… you owe somebody money or a serious favor and now you belong to them.
