[JURIST] Statistics indicate that the US Justice Department has declined to prosecute 87 percent of all terrorism case referrals from the FBI in fiscal year 2006, according to new findings [TRAC materials] released by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) [official website]. The numbers, obtained by TRAC from the Executive Office for US Attorneys [official website], show that while the Bureau has hired more employees since the Sept. 11 terror attacks [JURIST news archive], the FBI has filed fewer prosecutions in white collar crime, drugs, and organized crime cases, has filed fewer prosecutions in terrorism cases, and has obtained shorter average sentences [TRAC graphs] in terrorism cases than in previous years.

FBI assistant director John Miller [official profile] told AP the TRAC report was intellectually dishonest because the FBI has changed its tactics since the Sept. 11 attacks to focus on information-gathering that often does not lead to prosecutions. Another spokesperson said the TRAC statistics did not discriminate between real and prank terrorism reports. An earlier TRAC study [text] released in September also indicated that the number of terrorism-related prosecutions has sharply declined [JURIST report] after Sept. 11 and that less than half of those convicted on terror charges received prison sentences. AP has more.