Without a doubt I would prefer to head a small Family. One with a formal inducted membership of no more than maybe 25 to 35 members, tops.
With primary “associate members” added in, thats still another 100 or so men added to the borgata. Thats more than enough manpower to operate and make money, while still maintaining control, tranquility and stability.
[Note: Years back the FBI estimated each made guy averages 5 associates.]
So the structure would look something like this: Boss, Underboss, Consigliere, 3 Capodecina — with 7 or 8 men per crew, the equivalent 20-25 Soldiers.
But here’s the caveat. One of the most important criteria would be for this borgata to have exclusive rights to govern their own small city or territory (no competition). Good examples would be the Zito Family of Springfield, IL., Zammuto Family of Rockford, IL, Lanza Family of San Francisco, CA., La Rocca Family of Pittsburgh, PA., etc., etc.
A Family with jurisdiction over such a territory generally enjoys little to no violence — either internally or externally. A lucrative enough territory for everyone in the Family to earn well, diminishing the need for greed, jealousy and infighting. And lastly, but so important, these previously mentioned attributes also lead to a quiet and smooth running machine, which in turn helps avoid bad publicity which leads to law enforcement pressure and investigations.
I think another very interesting dynamic would be to look at single "crews" or "regimes" that were part of a larger "recognized" Family, per se. Yet, ruled over their acknowledged territory the same way a "Family" would.
"Regimes" like I'm speaking about were often viewed as stand-alone "Families" in and of themselves.
Good examples of this were the Salvatore Falcone Regime which tightly controlled the entire City of Utica, NY and its outer territories like Rome, and the even larger City of Syracuse; the "Cufari/Scibelli" Regime of Springfield, Massachusetts, which was also widely considered by the FBI as being almost a "Family" unto themselves. etc., etc.
