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A Syracuse University data organization analyzed U.S. Department of Justice case data and concluded that case records for January 2020 show white collar prosecutions have reached their lowest numbers since tracking began in 1986 during the Reagan administration.
Syracuse’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse said Tuesday that DOJ records show only 359 defendants were prosecuted in the first month of 2020 in cases that the department identified as white collar matters.
That figure represents an 8% decline in prosecutions since the same time last year, the organization said, and a 25% decline from five years ago.
If January prosecutions set the pace for the year, the organization said, the number of 2020 prosecutions total would be half as high as such prosecutions were during a peak after the financial crisis in 2011.
Susan Long, a co-director of TRAC and an associate professor of managerial statistics at the university, told Law360 that the white-collar designation her organization scrutinized “is the classification [that] the DOJ itself assigns the case.”
According to a statement by TRAC, that DOJ designation typically involves “some form of fraud or antitrust violations involving financial, insurance or mortgage institutions; health care providers; securities and commodities firms; or frauds committed in tax, federal procurement or federal programs among others.”
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