Mobsters, White-Collar and Street Criminals Running America

U.S. Justice Department is now in large part an Immigration Enforcement Agency says The Washington Post.




As crime runs rampant in many urban communities across America we now learn that the Bush Justice Department has failed to prosecute various types of street crimes. As reported in The Washington Post the Bush Justice Department has far less focused on the mob bosses, drug kingpins and bank robbers who have dominated much of its history, even as new FBI studies show a substantial rise in murders and other violent crimes over the past two years.

The Justice Department under the Bush administration has retreated from prosecutions of mobsters, white-collar criminals, environmental crimes and traditional civil rights infractions, new department data show.

There is more, Check out some of the stats WaPo has uncovered:

From 2000 to 2006, for example, there were large drops in the number of defendants related to environmental offenses (down 12 percent), organized crime (38 percent), white-collar crime (10 percent), bank robbery (18 percent) and bankruptcy fraud (46 percent), according to Justice Department statistics provided this week to The Washington Post. Money-laundering prosecutions related to drugs were also down nearly 25 percent, while the number of drug cases overall was stagnant.

There were simultaneous jumps in prosecutions related to immigration (up 36 percent), weapons cases (87 percent), official corruption (15 percent), and, most dramatically, terrorism and national security cases (876 percent). Indeed, Justice Department funds devoted to counterterrorism programs in Washington have tripled since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Department officials say the surge in resources for national security and terrorism probes, in particular, reflects the intense administration efforts to prevent another attack. But the number of terrorism-related defendants has been relatively small: Prosecutions peaked at 818 in 2003 and fell to 635 by 2006, and most of these were not for terrorist acts or plans. More HERE

No concern for Civil Rights - Justice Department is now an Immigration Enforcement Agency

The WaPo article points out, "While traditional civil rights cases fell, the number of defendants prosecuted for human-trafficking-related crimes rose from just two in 2000 to 65 six years later.

Perhaps most strikingly, the department's statistics show that Justice is now in large part an immigration enforcement agency: More than 19,000 defendants were charged with immigration violations in federal district courts in 2006, surpassing every other category except drug crimes. The data compiled by TRAC indicate that federal magistrates handled and disposed of an additional 18,000 immigration cases in 2006." More HERE

Are you surprised?