Five Families

Five Families by Selwyn Raab
The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

Category: Crime History Grade: B

No, I haven't forgotten about you guys. This latest book was a big project, clocking it at over 700 pages. Its well written and not terribly heavy reading - just really long. The subtitle really says it all. Raab, a long time crime reporter for the New York Times, has written a definitive history of the New York City branches of the Mafia. He traces back to the 19th century origins in Sicily up to pretty much the present day. Bottom line - the real stories are far more interesting, if not quite as romantic, as anything in The Godfather trilogy. And Tony Soprano is just a wimp!

Throughout the book, you are repeatedly struck by two overall impressions. First, the casual brutality, while not surprising if you've read anything about these guys, is astounding. He sang to the cops -- kill him. He got too ambitious -- kill him. He wasn't turning over enough cash to the boss - kill him. He insulted somebody - kill him. He touched the wrong guys daughter -- kill him. Just not a lot of job security in this organization.

The second thing, however, is that some of the guys were really, really smart - especially before the 1980s. Probably the most impressive gangster of the bunch was Lucky Luciano. Before him, these were basically Italian immigrant street gangs. They were making money, but they were also feuding with each other costing not only money, but lives. In addition, every war would turn up the police heat a little bit. It was Luciano's concept to divide the pie up on the theory that was plenty for everybody. In the now familiar story, everybody would be divided up in to families (five in New York, with one each in other major cities). The families would be divided in to groups of roughly ten "made guys" - run by a "capo" and supported by dozens of support troops, most of whom would never move up the ladder. Luciano's major innovation was the creation of the "commission" to settle disputes between families on territories, division of profits, creation of new "made guys" and, of course, to have approval over hits, or murders. While everybody could profit, nobody had any connection to crimes that they weren't directly involved in providing, for decades, immunity for prosecution - especially for the bosses - the higher ups who never got their hands dirty.

Raab also talks a lot about the other side of the Mafia battles. From Hoover's denial that the Mafia exists until forced to acknowledge it by the Kennedy brothers to Rudy Guliani who was one of the first successful prosecutors using new legal tools like the RICO statutes. The story of RICO (an acronym created backwards - the author wanted the law to carry the name of Edward G. Robinson's character in Little Caesar) is really pretty interesting. It was handcrafted to go after "criminal enterprises" like the Mafia by introducing laws that allowed cops to go after the leaders of the families by tying them to the benefits and oversight of crimes not just the commission of them. However, the law was actually on the books for over a decade, unused, before a couple of FBI agents went to a seminar given by the law professor who drafted it while an attorney for a senate committee. In the 80s and 90s, RICO became the primary tool for largely dismantling the entire crime infrastructure. By strengthening the reach and length of the penalties, RICO encouraged a lot of mobsters to switch sides. In those decades, a lot of the cases - John Gotti, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, "Chin" Gigante - were front page news.

Raab's book is a long trek so you really need have at least some interest in organized crime stories. If you don't, you'll probably be bored by page 70, much less page 700. For the few of you who do have an interest, this is probably the best single source of info I've seen on this subject.