White-collar and other prosecutions fall during Bush administration

[sabra]

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/whitecollar_and_other_prosecut.html#more

These are good days to be a white-collar criminal or a corrupt public official, apparently.

According to an analysis of Justice Department data, federal prosecutions of white collar criminals are down significantly since the period before President Bush took office, as are prosecutions of corrupt public officials.

A non-partisan research organization with an ungainly name, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse which is associated with Syracuse University, looked at the numbers and found that prosecutions of white-collar criminals have fallen 27 percent between fiscal year 2000 and 2007.

Meanwhile, public corruption prosecutions have fallen 14 percent in that same time period.

It’s possible that there’s less white-collar crime and public corruption in the nation which would explain the drop but that’s rather unlikely.

What really explains the drop, according to TRAC, is the reduction of resources to investigate and prosecute crimes in these areas as more resources have flowed to counterterrorism. Much of the drop appears to come during fiscal 2004.

[DU9598]

1. Iowa

They have spent over $500,000 on a white collar case against an openly-gay Democratic State Senator here in Iowa who is accused of "extortion" for trying to have a business associate of his pay him for work he had done.

I guess it is down for those who carry the water for the administration.