SDFLA criminal stats

The numbers are in. Criminal prosecutions are up 10% from last year, but still down significantly from 9-11. Vanessa Blum reports on the stats here:

At the current rate, the number of prosecutions in 2007 will be down roughly 12 percent from 2002, according to data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization affiliated with Syracuse University.

Federal prosecutors in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Boston areas have seen even larger decreases in criminal filings over that period.

In this region, covering Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and six other counties, the number of drug cases has fallen dramatically, sliding from 1,461 in 2002 to 883 in 2006, according to the Syracuse group. As of April 2007, the seventh month of the fiscal year, prosecutors had filed roughly 580 drug-related cases, on track to surpass the 2006 figure but well below the 2001 prosecutions.

U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta: "When resources become limited, you have to prioritize." He added that the office is on its way to a record year for prosecutions targeting gang crime, illegal guns and health care fraud.The number of immigration cases is also rising, from about 300 in 2002 to 500 expected in 2007.