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White-collar crime prosecutions continued their two-decade decline in 2021, plummeting from 9,507 prosecutions in 2001 to a projected 4,727 prosecutions in 2021.
Prosecution rates have varied during the pandemic: Justice Department data confirms that during the first nine months of 2021 the government reported 3,545 new white-collar crime prosecutions.
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, a data analysis organization, estimates that the number of 2021 prosecutions will total 4,727 by the year’s end — an 11 percent increase since the pandemic’s height, when COVID-19 “temporarily depressed prosecution levels,” a TRAC report reads.
But placed in context, 2021 prosecution case numbers confirm a long-term trend: white-collar crime prosecutions have declined dramatically over the past 20 years. The number of prosecutions dropped by 50.3 percent between 2001 and 2021, especially declining during the Trump administration.
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