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?