Domestic Terrorism Prosecutions for November 2006
The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during November 2006 the government reported 4 new domestic terrorism prosecutions.
The comparisons of the number of defendants charged with domestic terrorism-related offenses are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys. (See Table 1)
When monthly 2006 prosecutions are compared with those of the same period in the previous year, the filings were down (-15.6 percent). Prosecutions over the past year are still much lower than they were five years ago. Overall, the data show that the prosecutions are down 25.5 percent from levels reported in 2001.
The dip in these cases is partly related to increases in the matters filed in U.S. Magistrate Courts. If magistrate cases are excluded and only Federal District Court cases are counted, the overall decrease in domestic terrorism prosecutions is 2.8 percent instead of 25.5 percent. The evidence suggests that part of the difference may be the result of improvements in the recording of the magistrate cases by the Justice Department.
The decrease from the levels five years ago in domestic terrorism prosecutions is shown more clearly in Figure 1. The vertical bars in Figure 1 represent the number of domestic terrorism prosecutions recorded on a month-to-month basis. The superimposed line on the bars plots the six-month moving average so that natural fluctuations are smoothed out.
Number of Defendants in Domestic Terrorism Cases
Table 1 lists all separate cases with the number of defendants.
