Under Bush, it's a great time to be a white-collar criminal or corrupt public official

[Bluebear]

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. This is a trend that’s likely to continue, TRAC says.....

Why does this matter? Because, as TRAC says, what deters some corporate executives and public officials from breaking the law is the fear of getting caught. Substantially reduce or remove that fear and bad things happen....


http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/whitecollar_and_other_prosecut.html

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R