| Decline in Prosecution of Environment Crimes Under Obama |
| (17 Sep 2014)
The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during the first nine months of FY 2014, the government reported 271 new prosecutions of environment-related offenses.
If such prosecutions continue at the current rate, there will be a total of 361 environment prosecutions for the full year. This would represent a decrease of 19.6 percent from the 449 reported in FY 2013, which was already a marked drop from the 612 defendants prosecuted in FY 2012.
The result of this two-year decline would be a projected total for FY 2014 that falls well under half of the 927 environment crime prosecutions in FY 2007, a peak that occurred near the end President George W. Bush's second term. The two most commonly cited lead charges for all environment prosecutions in FY 2014 were 16 USC 3372 (illegally taken fish and wildlife) and 16 USC 703 (taking, killing or possessing migratory birds). The three districts with the largest number of these prosecutions in FY 2014 -- 19 each –- were the Central District of California (Los Angeles), the Southern District of Florida (Miami) and South Dakota. For more details, including a twenty-year timeline of prosecutions and top district rankings, see the report at: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/environ/363/In addition to this fiscal year report on environment crime, TRAC continues to offer free monthly reports on program categories such as immigration, drugs, weapons, white collar crime and terrorism. TRAC's reports also monitor selected government agencies such as the FBI, ATF, DHS and the IRS. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through June 2014, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulletins/Even more detailed criminal enforcement information for the period from FY 1986 through June 2014 is available to TRACFed subscribers via the Express and Going Deeper tools. Go to http://tracfed.syr.edu for more information. Customized reports for a specific agency, district, program, lead charge or judge are available via the TRAC Data Interpreter, either as part of a TRACFed subscription or on a per-report basis. Go to http://trac.syr.edu/interpreter to start. To keep up with TRAC, follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/tracreportsTRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/sponsor/ |
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