With the 5 NY families, Philly and New England mostly we all agree on here about the membership numbers and what their involved with. Why though is there always such varying opinions on the Outfit? Not just on here but other sites as well. We know how bad wikipedia can be as a source but I saw something on there recently saying the Genovese were only rivalled in size by the Gambino's and the Outfit.
Also from time to time we get posters on here shouting about how the Outfit has 200+ made guys, run Chicago, have judges, politicians in their pockets etc etc.
Why is this? We don't get people saying the Gambino's have 450 made guys on the street. If we are comparing the Outfit to a current family who are they on a level with?
Where to begin?
An outdated image of the Chicago Outfit is held by some people, more than any other LCN family. I think part of it was due to certain unique factors about the Outfit back in the day. Which, in turn, have led to people still equating just about any and all corruption and organized crime in Chicago with
the Outfit. Beyond that, most mob books cover the distant past. So we tend to use the news and more recent cases to shape our view of how things currently are. But, at least compared to the NY families, there hasn't been as much activity in Chicago. So I think an image is frozen in people's minds of the Outfit they read about in Roemer's books or whatever - the Outfit of the 1950's or 1970's.
Though that kind of misinformation on Wikipedia shouldn't surprise anyone, the fact that some really do believe the Outfit rivals the Genovese and Gambinos in size today shows how misguided some are. If we go with just the most recent official figures, and not numbers people pull out of thin air for their own purposes, it's not even comparable. The Genovese family is said to have approximately 200 total members and about 1,000 associates. The Outfit is said to have around 25-30 total members and a little over 100 associates. So you're comparing a total manpower of 1,200 for the Genovese to perhaps 150 for the Outfit. In other words, going by the official figures, the Genovese family is 8 times the size of the Outfit.
I've said it many times. The modern day Chicago mob is much more comparable, in both size and scope of activity, to the other remaining families outside New York - New England, New Jersey, Philadelphia. The only difference, looking at the official figures, is that the feds estimate Chicago to have a bigger ratio of associates to members (5 associates for every member) than the other smaller families (2 associates for every member).
