| Official Corruption Prosecutions Fall to 20 Year Low |
| (23 Mar 2016)
Recent data from the Justice Department show that 505 individuals were prosecuted for criminal corruption offenses during FY 2015, a decline of 3.6 percent from FY 2014 and down more than 30 percent from five years ago.
For the first four months of FY 2016, there have been just 140 new official corruption prosecutions. This is the lowest level reported for such prosecutions in the last 20 years.
The lead charge most commonly cited by the U.S. Attorneys in FY 2015 was 18 USC 371, involving conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the U.S., with 76 prosecutions. Next was 18 USC 666 (theft or bribery in programs receiving federal funds), accounting for 60 prosecutions, and 18 USC 201 (bribery of public officials and witnesses) with 57. In relation to population, Montana led all districts in FY 2015 with a total of 11 official corruption prosecutions per one million people. In second place was Washington D.C. with 9 prosecutions per million, followed by the Eastern District of North Carolina and Alaska, both with 6. For more details, including a twenty-year timeline of prosecutions and top district rankings, see the report at: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/419/In addition to this report on official corruption, TRAC continues to offer free monthly reports on selected government agencies such as the FBI, ATF, DHS and the IRS. TRAC's reports also monitor program categories such as immigration, drugs, weapons, white collar crime and terrorism. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through January 2016, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulletins/Even more detailed criminal enforcement information for the period from FY 1986 through January 2016 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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Copyright 2016