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It’s open season for environmental crimes in the U.S., a new report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) suggests.
Prosecutions under environmental law fell 10 percent for the 2018 fiscal year from their 2017 levels, which were themselves a substantial drop from prior years. Overall, federal prosecutions for environmental crimes are now down 40 percent from 2013 levels.
The magnitude of these prosecutions has never been particularly impressive. Even at previous highs, the feds pursued fewer than 300 cases per year in the categories tracked by the group. The 109 new environmental cases brought by federal prosecutors last fiscal year is roughly half the figure from 20 years earlier.
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