While clearly diminished from its peak, I think it's fair to say that the American LCN is still high up there in terms of organized crime. Still, just because it does its fair share of white collar crime, the families still do plenty of street crime -- burglaries, drugs, etc. To me, all that really separates the Five Families from, say, the Bloods and the Crips is that the Five Families have had the network connections to get plugged into more advanced forms of crime. You're more likely to meet up with corrupt business owners, politicians, trade union officials, contractors, etc. in a white middle-income community than an extremely impoverished African-American community. Of course, as BlackFamily indicated, it is certainly not unheard of for the leaders of black street gangs to integrate themselves into the legit business world, even if it is just to set up fronts.
Still, considering the number of turncoats, attention from the government, and just plain violence the USA LCN has had to deal with, it's amazing to me that the Five Families continue to exist at all. "Omertà " no longer seems to exist (to the extent it ever really existed) and even if a connected or made guy doesn't already have an incentive to flip to avoid jail time, a trigger-happy boss or underboss or even capo is another reason to abandon organized crime.
Why do people still get into it? They just fall in with a bad crowd growing up? Or are they still lured from the false prestige and tradition that surrounds Mafiosi? Or some combination of the two?
I'm also curious as to whether the Genovese family is still the "biggest and baddest" of the Five Families and how much of that is owed to avoiding the problems the other families have faced (not as many turncoats, no bloodthirsty leaders like in the Lucchese). Or is the "Ivy League" reputation still valid, in that Genovese Mafiosi are genuinely smarter than your average thug?
the Geneveses are reported to have around 200 made guys so that puts them right around the size of the gambinos, maybe just a little bigger. To me why the Geneveses are still the strongest goes back to after the 1985 commission trial, The Lucheses went from Corrallo to the "bloodthirsty" Vic and Gas, The Gambinos went from big Paul to Gotti, the colombos had Persico clinging onto power from prison which caused a war causing numerous people to flip and many many more to get arrested, The bonnanos thrived for a while under Massino until the feds started to close in on them and everyone started to flip. All four of those families are just now starting to stabilize from those reigns while the Geneveses have been thriving all along cause Gigante avoided being charged in the case and remained on the street installing secrecy and discipline in the families ranks that still exist today through guys like Bellomo, Cirillo, muscarella, Dentico and many others, i mean theyve only had like 6 made guys flip and 3 of them were from the springfield mass crew.
