Last year’s results have been compiled, at http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/report031208.html#figure2
Reporting sharply elevated numbers of “Arrests” is good Political P/R for the committee to re-elect, and results in “Inflating” the actual effectiveness of that so-called “War Against Terrorism”… What they DON’T want Americans to do is “Follow-up” by looking at the actual “Rates of Conviction”. They ESPECIALLY don’t want people to actually COMPARE that conviction rate to the equal period pre 9-11. The “Re-Elect” key word is “Effectiveness” in that so-called war, but the statistics just don’t bear it out.
“Arrests” are up by a factor of 8 Times the previous (pre 9-11) period numbers. In contrast, actual “Federal Convictions” for “Terrorism” related crimes (National & International / Resulting in sentencing of 5 years or more in prison) have actually DROPPED by a factor of 1/3 under the same period as compared to the period immediately before 9-11.
Would this not tend to reflect that the system is now relying upon what could be called a “Round-up” method instead of basing their activities on good old fashioned police work & the collection of solid evidence that stands-up under serious cross examination?
All this while spending hundreds of millions (Billions?) of tax dollars and passing landmark (so-called emergency) legislation severely affecting the privacy & rights of all American. Personally, I think that the NUMBERS of success & failure speak for themselves. I highly recommend that people take the time to really take a close look at things like the official TRAC Report not to mention other government published reports (by the GAO, etc.) that break things like this down into the raw “Stats” … They might discover a surprise or two. I measure effectiveness by comparing the rather significant INCREASES in acts of Terrorism to the pitiful numbers of successful prosecutions for the same. It just doesn’t look like they are actually winning to me…
Straight from the 2002-2003 Statistics: Have we checked our “Patriot Act” recently?
We have “Emergency Measures” to significantly limit the rights to privacy, due process, & general constitutional freedoms of approximately 294,036,309 Americans in order to:
1.) Get 6400 “Referrals” for possible prosecution
2.) Resulting in only 1127 filed “Prosecutions”
3.) Yielding only 879 “Convictions”
4.) 373 resulting in a day or more jail time served (Averaging 14 days in jail)
5.) & only 33 convictions of more then 5 years in prison
(Only 3 convictions of 20 years or more).
(14 days for “Terrorism”… Hmmmmmmm…)
Analytically speaking…… 294,036,309 to 33 (….or approximately 89 Million to 1) …… Assuming of course that all 33 convictions were US Citizens.
…and if this isn’t interesting enough…
6.) “Federal Prison Sentences” (Convictions resulting in sentences from 5 years to life) before and after the 9/11/01 Attacks… Down by 1/3 in a direct comparison to the 2 years prior to 9-11.
Sounds like that’s worth rewriting the constitution to me…. MORE NEW & IMPROVED LAW will always solve the problem, right?
So, is there anyone who still thinks the Patriot Act is worthwhile?
Note: I feel compelled to mention that one of my brothers authored nearly all of this. What I contributed amounts to mere editing, but I stand behind the whole thing.