Ivy, if it makes you feel better, I believe that all the available evidence suggests that:
1) The Outfit is less active than Philly. Italian-American assimilation did in the Outfit; Philly seems to still have a pool of youngish Italian-American guys willing to get involved. (And yes guys I am aware of the existence of Nick Ferriola.)
2) The Outfit seems to be more on par with New England, and maybe even somewhat less so.
3) The Outfit is beginning to turn into what Detroit is like now, and in a decade or so will be like what Buffalo is like now.
4) The Sarno case probably shows a good example of what the remaining Outfit street rackets are like. Or were like a few years ago. Look at the case, and consider the fact that people were speculating that he was the boss at the time; it speaks volumes.
I'm going to keep saying this stuff until someone comes along with something REAL to prove me wrong. I will cheerfully admit I'm wrong if someone actually proves it - I always do!
Well first, I think New England and Philadelphia are very comparable. In terms of both size and activity. The only difference is that Philadelphia has more younger guys. But if you look at the cases over the past decade, the families more or less mirror one another.
Second, if you look at the quantity of cases in Chicago over the last decade, it's actually comparable to New England or Philadelphia. But Chicago can be a little harder to read, as the LCN connection isn't always as clear. By that I mean, while there aren't that many "Family Secret" type indictments where it clearly involves the Outfit, there are a lot of cases that have Outfit "trappings," for lack of a better word. And, according to the estimates, the total manpower in the Chicago mob is the same as New England or Philadelphia but the member-to-associate ratio is a little different.
Beyond that, there does seem to be more involvement in legitimate businesses in Chicago. Some would argue that makes the Outfit more powerful than New England or Philadelphia. But it could also be argued that the Outfit is simply closer to merging into legitimate society, which will ultimately coincide with the crime family disappearing. After all, once you no longer have that core of made guys who do all the criminal stuff, in addition to the legit stuff, all you really have left is legit businesses owned by guys (or the children of guys) who used to belong to a viable mob family.
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