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?
Yeah, one thing that sets the LCN (particularly the 5 NY families) apart from most other groups is it's longevity. These are organizations that have been running for nearly a century. The Italians had that culture and tradition that kept it going long after the Irish and Jewish mobs were history. Over the past 30 or 40 years, attrition has taken it's toll and, as a result, many of the LCN families are gone or nearly so. But the NY families won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Not only have they been able to maintain their relative membership count in recent times, they are still very diversified. And that diversification is another thing that sets them apart from many other groups. And one of the reasons the Genovese family is still the strongest.
Guiliani said once, "We turned the MOST POWERFUL organized crime group in America into JUST ANOTHER organized crime group in America."
^Realistic statement without over doing it.
Agreed. That's a very good way to put it.
Another good quote from Giuliani, that hits on this very topic is below...
"If we take back the labor unions, the legitimate businesses, eventually they become just another street gang. Spiritually, psychologically, they've always been just a street gang."
