The only thing is, with gangs like the camorra, and even cosa nostra, those boys grow up on the streets of naples or in backward provinces of sicily like agrigento, there is no work. So even the mothers groom their sons to be good soldiers and work like their fathers. You're born into your family, which most likely already has mafia ties and connected. So it's either you renounce it and get an education and look for any remedial job, sit on unemployment for years, or are lucky enough to get work, or you stick to your mob ties.
On the streets of those cities, you either eat or you're eaten.
But in the US, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to be involved, or actively try and join mafia.
And they're all part of a gang. Hence the word "gangsters". Some just more organized than others.
What, we don't have poverty in the United States? We're living in a time when even kids from well-to-do middle class families are coming home from college because they can't find a job right out of school. For the working class poor it's even worse. Admittedly, the poverty in parts of Italy is much more intense than is typically found in the United States, but there can't be too much separating the slums of Naples, Lecce or Palermo from certain neighborhoods in U.S. inner cities. In both cases there is a lot of pressure to not just be a violent macho man but also to turn your nose up at a system that doesn't work for you (which can be a justified perspective).
When it comes to the US LCN in particular, however, I do acknowledge that most families in Bensonhurst or Ozone Park aren't living hand-to-mouth, even if they are working class. Still, the vast majority of Mafiosi aren't Ivy League intellectuals; they're blue collar regular Joes who, for whatever reason, came up streetwise and probably already connected.
Granted, each of them makes a choice to pursue a life of crime but it also has to be conceded that once they go down that road it's hard to rehabilitate yourself. The U.S. criminal system and society in general does not make it easy for that to happen. Once you have a record, it's pretty much impossible to find a really good job that pays well. You could maybe work a couple of dead-end menial jobs to make ends meet, 9 to 5 for a boss you hate and sees you as an expendable commodity. But maybe you got a family to feed, you're behind on your car payments...
Then you have to see the crooks in the neighborhood, the guys with the stolen suits and stolen Cadillacs, flashing their wealth everywhere. They don't work, they just sit in social clubs and play cards or watch TV, and maybe once in awhile they go out on a big score that keeps them flush for a little while longer. Moreover, some of these guys are the same kids you grew up with, who you know are stone cold idiots but who are living a better life than you are, at least in material terms.
Of course we all know that the Mob life isn't any better. You have to fight for every crumb that comes your way, your "brothers" trying to rip you off at every opportunity and a made guy or a capo breathing down your neck to give you everything you work hard to earn. Yeah, maybe you end up making more money even after everyone gets a taste, but it won't last, because now the feds want to know how a broke-dick nobody like you is suddenly wearing Armani and driving a Beamer. And even if you do somehow manage to avoid getting killed by your rivals or arrested by the cops, you can never retire -- you're locked into working your butt off for, again, a boss that just sees you as an expendable commodity. You just traded one pyramid scheme for another, except this scheme doesn't have any sort of workers' rights or other legal protections. In fact, the law is working AGAINST you now.
So the life of a criminal isn't really a "better" life by any stretch, and it's still better to be a working stiff than a crook, but at the same time I can sort of understand why guys go down that road. There is individual responsibility, but environment nevertheless plays a role.
