White-collar criminals get more get-out-of-jail cards

In what should come as no surprise to anyone playing "find the Brownie", a new study by Syracuse University's TRAC reports that US federal prosecutions of white-collar crime are down:

Of the four principle groupings of federal prosecutions, the smallest concerned white collar crime violations -- 8,626 prosecutions in FY 2004. While the information from the U.S. Attorneys showed the total for these cases had remained essentially unchanged from 2000 to 2003, it documented a decline of about ten percent from FY 2003 to FY 2004. Estimates for 2005 indicate that the decline is continuing.

Drug prosecutions are also down. Immigration prosecutions, on the other hand, have doubled from 2000 to 2004. Weapons prosecutions appear to have levelled off, and terrorism cases are still just a very small percentage of the total federal prosecution workload.

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