United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters

June 1995 U.S. ATTORNEYS

More Accountability

for Implementing

Priority Programs Is

Desirable

GAO/GGD-95-150

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

General Government Division

B-259728 

June 23, 1995

The Honorable Karen L. Thurman

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on National Security,

 International Affairs and

 Criminal Justice

Committee on Government Reform

 and Oversight

House of Representatives

The Honorable Gary A. Condit

House of Representatives

U.S. Attorneys litigate for the government in criminal and civil

proceedings. They prosecute individuals charged with violations of federal

criminal law. They also represent the government in civil cases and collect

money and property owed to the government. By statute, U.S. Attorneys

are under substantial supervisory control of the Attorney General. For

example, the Attorney General is authorized to supervise all litigation

involving the United States and to direct all U.S. Attorneys and their

assistant U.S. Attorneys in the discharge of their duties.1

The Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), located in the

Department of Justice, provides assistance and coordination services for

93 U.S. Attorneys. In practice, the U.S. Attorneys exercise a large degree of

independence and discretion in the handling of their cases. This

independence and discretion stem from several factors, including historic

precedent, the appointment process for U.S. Attorneys, and their ties to

the districts they serve.

In view of the independence and discretion exercised by U.S. Attorneys in

determining which cases to prosecute and recent growth in the size and

cost of their operations, the Chairman of the former Subcommittee on

Information, Justice, Transportation and Agriculture, House Committee on

Government Operations, asked us to review several issues relating to U.S.

Attorney priorities. Specifically, he asked (1) how the Justice Department

communicates national priorities to the U.S. Attorneys, (2) how selected

U.S. Attorneys establish their priorities and coordinate them with law

enforcement agencies in their districts, and (3) what, if any, measures

Justice uses to assess U.S. Attorneys’ effectiveness in meeting national

priorities.

1

28 U.S.C. 519.

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During the course of this review, Congress enacted the Government

Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA).2

 The law requires that Justice

and all federal agencies will set goals, measure performance, and report

results. We considered Justice’s processes for setting priorities and

measuring results in the context of the GPRA’s requirements, which are to

be phased in over the period of 1997 to 2000.

Results in Brief Justice did not have a specific process for communicating national law

enforcement priorities over the past 10 years. National priorities were

communicated to U.S. Attorneys through a variety of formal and informal

channels, such as Attorney General speeches, press conferences,

testimony before Congress, budget memorandums, and in discussions at

seminars and conferences. Often, priorities were broadly stated, covering

a wide range of crime types. An EOUSA official said that national priorities

had been so broad and wide ranging that almost every major crime type

could be classified as a priority.

Although Justice continued to communicate priorities to U.S. Attorneys

through a variety of channels in 1994, it moved toward setting more

focused law enforcement priorities. The Attorney General expressed

commitment to principles of strategic management and clear articulation

of priorities, goals, and missions for U.S. Attorneys. She ranked violent

crime and health-care fraud as the nation’s number one and two law

enforcement priorities, respectively, and took specific steps to implement

these priorities.

Justice did not require U.S. Attorneys to have processes in place to

establish and communicate their local priorities. Seven of the eight U.S.

Attorneys we visited did not have formal processes to establish priorities

and communicate them to law enforcement components in their districts.

Their priorities were set informally on the basis of the Attorney General’s

priorities, as well as on the crime problems and socioeconomic

characteristics of their districts. For example, government program and

procurement fraud was a priority for one U.S. Attorney in part because his

district was the home of many defense contractors.

The U.S. Attorneys we interviewed were generally satisfied with their

input into the development of national priorities. Investigative agency

personnel we visited generally said that they understood the priorities of

the U.S. Attorneys. These personnel felt that the priorities of the U.S.

2

Public Law 103-62.

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Attorneys were closely or adequately coordinated with the priorities of

their own offices.

Caseloads and workloads for U.S. Attorneys’ Offices nationwide, and for

the eight districts we visited, indicated that most cases filed and attorney

time spent in fiscal year 1993 were in three broad priority program

areas—drugs, economic/white-collar crimes, and violent crimes. Within

these broad program areas, criminal caseload and workload statistics

varied for the U.S. Attorneys we visited. See appendix II for an analysis of

EOUSA statistics on criminal caseloads and workloads.

Justice had no requirements for U.S. Attorneys to measure their own

effectiveness, and none of the U.S. Attorneys we visited had developed set

processes for doing so, although they noted various sources of information

that they thought provided indicators of the effectiveness of their

operations. Justice’s evaluation program, which officials said was the

primary means of assessing the activities of individual U.S. Attorneys’

Offices, covered the issue of priority-setting broadly, if at all, in the

evaluation reports that were available at the time of our review. According

to EOUSA, changes were made to the evaluation program beginning in 1994

that incorporated new methods of determining whether U.S. Attorneys

were addressing national priorities.

Due to the unreliability of some data and the lack of other data, EOUSA

could not fully use its information systems to determine how U.S.

Attorneys were addressing national and local prosecutorial priorities.

Some existing measures of U.S. Attorneys’ caseloads and workloads

appeared to be inaccurate. The information systems did not collect some

other information that may be useful in determining how U.S. Attorneys

address national and local priorities and for other resource management

purposes.

At the end of 1994, Justice was developing plans to implement the GPRA’s

requirements to measure performance. Justice determined that

performance goals and performance indicators would be required for U.S.

Attorneys collectively, rather than for individual U.S. Attorneys. The

Attorney General asked Justice components to review existing data to see

what elements would be useful as indicators of performance required to

implement the GPRA. EOUSA had initiated steps to improve the quality of its

information management systems, though additional efforts were needed.

For example, though we did not make a reliability assessment of the

automated information systems used by EOUSA to produce annual

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statistical reports, it appeared, on the basis of discussions with EOUSA and

U.S. Attorneys’ Offices personnel and review of evaluation reports on the

U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited, that data did not accurately reflect the

caseloads and workloads of all of the offices. Quality control measures to

ensure the accuracy of performance indicators were lacking, and Justice

did not measure the complexity of cases handled by U.S. Attorneys.

Background The 93 U.S. Attorneys, serving 94 federal judicial districts,3

 operated out of

195 staffed offices in fiscal year 1993. They had an operating budget of

nearly $800 million, and more than 4,000 attorneys and nearly 5,000

support personnel to assist them. The budget and staff for U.S. Attorneys

grew substantially in the past decade. Between fiscal years 1984 and l993,

the overall U.S. Attorney budget, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled

from $340 million to $796 million. The average number of personnel in U.S.

Attorney offices also more than doubled in that period from 4,429 to 9,006.

Historic and Political

Factors Contributing to

Independence of U.S.

Attorneys

Since the earliest days of the nation’s history, almost a century before the

Justice Department was established, U.S. Attorneys have prosecuted cases

in the federal judicial districts. The Judiciary Act of 1789 directed the

president to appoint an attorney for each federal judicial district to

prosecute all crimes and offenses against the United States and all civil

actions in which the United States was concerned.4

 At that time, U.S.

Attorneys prosecuted only crimes specifically mentioned in the

Constitution, such as piracy, treason, and counterfeiting.

U.S. Attorneys functioned without supervision by any executive agency for

about 40 years. In 1820, Congress paved the way for some central

oversight of U.S. Attorneys. Congress gave the president power to

designate an officer within the Department of the Treasury to oversee U.S.

Attorneys’ activities. About 10 years later, Congress created the position of

Solicitor of the Treasury to oversee U.S. Attorneys. Authority over U.S.

Attorneys shifted to the Attorney General after the Civil War. The Attorney

General received statutory authority to supervise U.S. Attorneys in 1870

when the Department of Justice was established.

3

The same U.S. Attorney serves the District of Guam and the District of the Northern Mariana Islands.

4

1 Stat. 73, 92-93. The Judiciary Act also provided for the appointment of the Attorney General to

represent the United States in litigation before the Supreme Court and to furnish legal advice to the

president and department heads.

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In 1953, EOUSA was established in the office of the Deputy Attorney

General. Among other things, EOUSA was to (1) maintain a check on the

overall performance of the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices through inspections,

(2) serve as liaison between U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and other parts of

Justice, and (3) facilitate the exchange of information and ideas among

U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and between those offices and other parts of

Justice. Including personnel on detail from U.S. Attorney Offices and

professional and support personnel, EOUSA consisted of about 277 staff as

of February 1995.

The Attorney General is responsible for setting national law enforcement

priorities and accounting to Congress for how Justice resources are used

to address them. The Attorney General is the chief legal officer of the

federal government and exercises authority and responsibility over

enforcement of the federal criminal law. As head of Justice, the Attorney

General is responsible for the performance of the Department’s

components and functions. This includes both its investigative

components, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and its litigating components,

such as the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. With reference to the U.S. Attorneys,

the law provides that the Attorney General shall supervise all litigation to

which the United States is a party and shall direct all U.S. Attorneys and

assistant U.S. Attorneys in the discharge of their duties. The Attorney

General’s responsibility for resource allocation within Justice includes

determining staffing and funding levels for U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.

As a practical matter, however, the Attorney General’s authority over U.S.

Attorneys is mitigated by the fact that it is the president who has the

authority to appoint U.S. Attorneys, subject to Senate confirmation, and to

remove them. Justice participates in the appointment process by providing

the president with the names of qualified nominees. The local standing of

U.S. Attorneys also contributed to their unusual degree of independence.

As one commentator observed:5

“The [Justice] Department relies upon [U.S. Attorneys] to implement national legal policy

as it is shaped by the political process in Washington, D.C. Yet, unlike most other field

personnel implementing centrally determined policies, they belong to and identify with the

community in which they serve. Because their appointment depends upon their political

standing in the community, U.S. Attorneys frequently feel they owe their position to local

political personalities and interests. They perform their legal duties in their home

territories and plan to remain in the community and pursue a legal or political career there

5

Eisenstein, Counsel for the United States: U.S. Attorneys in the Political and Legal Systems (1978).

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when they leave office. Thus, local claims on their attention, time, and policies come to

rival the demands of national policy and headquarters directives.”

Impact of Government

Performance and Results

Act on Federal Agencies

The enactment of the GPRA will require Justice and all federal agencies to

set goals, measure performance, and report results. Goals must be stated

in a way that will allow assessments of whether they have been met.

Programs may be consolidated or disaggregated, as long as any

consolidation of programs does not omit or minimize the significance of a

major program.

By September 1997, each agency is to have submitted to the Office of

Management and Budget (OMB) and Congress a 5-year strategic plan for its

program activities. The strategic plan should articulate the organization’s

fundamental mission and lay out its long-term goals and objectives for

accomplishing that mission. This plan is to be updated every 3 years and

should serve as the starting point and basic underpinning of the agency’s

goal-setting and performance measurement process.

GPRA does not require that the goals and objectives be stated as

department priorities. The goals and objectives could focus on any of a

number of issues affecting a department’s direction, services, or values.

For example, a departmental goal could be to improve efficiency,

measured by a specific decrease in the average time to perform a certain

task or a specific increase in the number of forms processed or letters

written.

Beginning with fiscal year 1999, agencies are to have developed annual

program performance plans for submission to OMB and Congress. Program

performance plans are to link agencies’ daily operations to the broad goals

and objectives established in the strategic plans. The performance plans

are to define target levels in objective, measurable terms so that actual

achievement can be compared against the targets. When a target has not

been met, an explanation of why not, and what actions would be needed to

achieve the unmet goals, is required.

Objectives, Scope,

and Methodology

Our objectives were to determine

• how Justice communicates national prosecutorial priorities to U.S.

Attorneys;

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• how selected U.S. Attorneys establish their priorities, including whether

they consider national prosecutorial priorities and coordinate their

priorities with those of federal law enforcement agencies and state

prosecutors; and

• what, if any, measures Justice uses to assess U.S. Attorneys’ effectiveness

in meeting national priorities.

We conducted our review at Justice headquarters and in eight U.S.

Attorney districts. The eight districts we visited were the Central District

of California, the Southern District of Florida, the Western District of

Michigan, the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, the Northern

District of Texas, and the Districts of Maine and Maryland. These districts

were judgmentally selected to obtain a geographic representation and a

combination of large and small offices. The 8 districts did not constitute a

statistically representative sample of all 94 districts.

We interviewed officials at Justice headquarters. In each district, we did

structured interviews with the U.S. Attorney and other representatives of

the U.S. Attorney’s Office, representatives of federal law enforcement

agencies and other federal agencies that deal with U.S. Attorneys, and

state prosecutors. At Justice headquarters and in the districts, we

reviewed records and documents containing data on priorities,

organization, staffing, and operations of U.S. Attorney Offices. We also

reviewed prosecution guidelines and 10 evaluation reports done between

1990 and 1993 at the 8 offices we visited, and we analyzed caseload and

workload data for each office. Our discussions on effectiveness measures

focused on the status of efforts by Justice to comply with the GPRA.

We provided a draft of this report for comment to the Attorney General

and received written comments from the Director of EOUSA. The comments

are summarized on pages 26 through 28 and reprinted in appendix III.

We did our work between January 1993 and December 1994 in accordance

with generally accepted government auditing standards. A detailed

description of our objectives, scope, and methodology is contained in

appendix I.

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Past Attorneys

General

Communicated Broad

National Priorities

Through a Variety of

Forums

Over the last 10 years, Attorneys General did not issue prosecutorial

priorities through any specific process. According to EOUSA, Justice did not

issue any “definitive lists” of prosecutorial priorities or maintain historical

records documenting priorities over time. Rather, Attorneys General

communicated priorities through a variety of forums, such as in budget

requests to Congress, congressional testimony, speeches, and press

conferences. In addition, information on priorities was included in

memorandums to U.S. Attorneys and other Justice components as a part

of the process of developing budget requests each fiscal year. An EOUSA

official said that this often resulted in a wide range of crimes being named

as priorities and provided little specific guidance to U.S. Attorneys on how

to best direct their resources.

According to the eight U.S. Attorneys we visited, the Attorney General

communicated national priorities to them through channels such as

Attorney General and Justice directives, policies, and memorandums.

Priorities were also communicated through means such as discussions at

meetings, training sessions, seminars, and conferences.

Some priorities cited over this period were stated as specific crime types.

Examples of specifically stated priorities included narcotics trafficking,

public corruption, counterintelligence, and environmental crimes.

Other priorities were broadly stated, encompassing a wide range of crime

types. For example, in most of the fiscal years from 1980 to 1994,

white-collar crime was designated as a priority in Justice’s budget

guidance. White-collar crime encompasses many offenses including:

securities and commodities fraud, financial institution fraud, antitrust

violations, health-care fraud, computer fraud, public corruption, insurance

fraud, bank embezzlement, federal procurement fraud, and bankruptcy

fraud. Given its breadth, such a priority provided little guidance as to the

relative importance of the individual crimes or offenses of which it was

constituted.

An EOUSA official told us that a criticism of national priorities in the past

was that everything was a priority. We noted, for example, that for fiscal

year 1994, a total of 17 priorities were enunciated in various Attorney

General speeches, testimony, and budget memorandums.

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Justice Moved Toward

Communicating More

Specific National Law

Enforcement

Priorities in 1994

EOUSA officials told us that they thought Justice would articulate priorities

with more specificity in the future than it had in the past. Actions by the

Attorney General in 1994 offered specific guidance about how top-ranked

priorities should be implemented. Even so, the guidance left U.S.

Attorneys considerable discretion on how best to approach priority crime

categories in their districts.

First, the Attorney General ranked her two top priorities—violent crime

and health-care fraud, respectively. Second, she issued written guidance to

U.S. Attorneys explaining what she wanted done to implement the violent

crime priority. A national antiviolent crime initiative was undertaken in

early 1994. Each U.S. Attorney was to designate a senior attorney to be a

violent crime coordinator. Each U.S. Attorney was also to meet with

federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in their districts to form

a new, or strengthen an existing, violent crime working group. Each U.S.

Attorney was to do a survey to identify and prioritize the violent crime

problems that were susceptible to a coordinated federal, state, and local

attack. Then, each U.S. Attorney was to develop a plan to implement the

national initiative.

Justice also is considering how best to develop indicators of the

effectiveness of U.S. Attorneys’ implementation of antiviolent crime

initiatives. The Acting Chief of Justice’s Criminal Division Section on

Terrorism and Violent Crime said that Justice will probably require some

type of reporting from U.S. Attorneys on the results of their antiviolent

crime efforts, but officials had not determined what the reporting

measures would be as of February 1995.

U.S. Attorneys were not asked to develop plans for implementing the

Attorney General’s health-care fraud priority program. However, the

Attorney General did take some steps to indicate the importance of this

priority program. She designated a Special Counsel for Health-Care Fraud

within Justice to coordinate all of Justice’s health-care fraud activities. The

Special Counsel has formed an Executive Level Health-Care Fraud Policy

Group composed of representatives from Justice and other agencies to

provide a forum for discussing and addressing interagency issues. Working

through the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, the

Special Counsel also has requested that each U.S. Attorney (1) designate

an Assistant U.S. Attorney to be the health-care fraud coordinator for their

district and (2) participate in local health-care fraud working groups, many

of which are made up of representatives from federal, state, and local

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investigative and prosecutive agencies, as well as private insurance

company investigators.

U.S. Attorneys Had

Input Into the

Development of

National Priorities

U.S. Attorneys we visited were satisfied with their input into setting

national prosecutive priorities. They told us that they expressed their

views about which crime types should be considered priorities primarily

through the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys and

its subcommittees.

The Advisory Committee was formed in 1973 to address topics of concern

to the Attorney General or U.S. Attorneys. A mix of geographic regions and

office sizes are represented on the Advisory Committee, which is

composed of the Attorney General and a rotating group of 15 U.S.

Attorneys who are appointed for staggered 3-year terms. U.S. Attorneys

who do not serve on the full committee may participate on subcommittees.

Seven of the eight U.S. Attorneys we interviewed said that they had input

on what national prosecutorial priorities should be primarily through their

involvement with the Advisory Committee.

An EOUSA official noted that the Advisory Committee was helpful not only

as a forum for the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys to discuss national

priorities, but also as a mechanism to encourage consistency in how U.S.

Attorneys respond to the priorities. He believed that when U.S. Attorneys

meet and discuss appropriate responses to priorities, this could lead to

similar responses in offices around the country. If an approach is working

well in one U.S. Attorney’s Office, other U.S. Attorneys may try the same

approach.

U.S. Attorneys

Stressed the Need for

Flexibility in

Establishing National

Priorities

The U.S. Attorneys we visited cited flexibility, discretion, and the latitude

to focus on local concerns as key components of a national priority-setting

process. Six of the eight U.S. Attorneys we interviewed said that the

priorities communicated to them reflected an appropriate balance

between generalities and specifics and provided a useful national

framework for deciding which prosecutions to emphasize. Summaries of

comments made by these interviewees follow:

• The national priorities have generally been good ones, and we have had

the flexibility to react appropriately to them at the district level. Very few

national priorities apply to every district, and I think the Attorney General

recognizes that we cannot gratuitously respond to every priority that

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comes down. For example, if health-care fraud is not a problem in a

particular district, the U.S. Attorney should not be compelled to turn the

district upside down looking for those cases to address a national priority.

In our district, we have no problem with organized crime, so we do not

devote resources there.

• The priorities Justice articulates are the right ones. Where the Department

falls short is in translating priorities into action. It is bothersome that more

work is not going on in some areas. For example, we know that the

problems are there in the student loan program, with securities fraud and

government contract fraud, but agents do not have the expertise to work

these cases and attorneys have limited knowledge of them. White-collar

crime is a priority, but the FBI here has only one out of four of its squads

working white-collar cases. That one squad covers financial institution

fraud, health-care fraud, and every other kind of white-collar crime.

One interviewee said that he does not pay much attention to national

priorities, preferring to trust his staff’s judgment, focus on local interests,

and prosecute anything that is big enough to warrant his office’s attention.

Another said that he had no problem with guidance from Justice, but

would disapprove of Justice’s exercising specific approval or control over

the types of cases U.S. Attorneys prosecute.

Supervisors in several U.S. Attorneys’ Offices stressed that “big cases”

were prosecuted whether or not they were designated as priority crime

types. One U.S. Attorney noted that what a case needs is what a case gets,

priority crime type or not. How much of a priority the case is depends, in

part, on the common sense of the attorney and supervisor assigned to the

case.

Most U.S. Attorneys

Set Local Priorities

and Coordinated With

Other Law

Enforcement

Agencies Informally

With one exception, the U.S. Attorneys we visited did not use formal,

structured processes to establish their priorities. They usually arrived at

priorities informally, after considering the Attorney General’s priorities,

their own experience and knowledge of the district, and input from their

staff and representatives of other law enforcement agencies that

investigated the federal matters brought to them for prosecution.

The U.S. Attorneys we interviewed told us that they exercised broad

discretion in establishing the priorities for their offices. However, almost

all of those we interviewed said that the Attorney General’s priorities as a

whole were considered when setting local prosecutive priorities. Most of

the U.S. Attorneys we visited cited health-care fraud, violent crime, and

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narcotics trafficking as national priorities that were adopted locally.

However, the degree to which they adopted national priorities varied

depending on the existence and significance of a particular crime type

within their districts.

A district’s geographic, social, and economic characteristics were cited as

important determinants of the U.S. Attorney’s priorities, as were the

impact, severity, and pervasiveness of particular crimes. The U.S.

Attorneys we visited provided the following examples of why certain

crimes were local priorities.

• In the Northern District of Texas, white-collar crime was a high priority

because the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area is a major corporate

service center for the southwest. Narcotics trafficking was a significant

priority because of the district’s proximity to the Mexican border.

Government program and procurement fraud was a priority because many

defense contractors were located in the area.

• In the Eastern District of New York, organized crime was a priority

because the area is the residence of or venue for activities of major

organized crime figures.

Although they each tended to place more importance on certain priorities

than others, seven of the eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited did not

rank their priorities. One U.S. Attorney, for example, said that there was

no formal ranking of priorities, but that some issues were more important

than others. He said that the level of importance depended, in part, on the

strength of his relationship with the particular investigative agency

responsible for that priority crime. Another U.S. Attorney said that the

relative amount of resources devoted to particular priorities depended on

the level and types of crime occurring in the district at any given point in

time. Accordingly, the relative importance of priorities to one another may

change often. A supervisory attorney in one office said that the top nine

priority crimes were ranked, but he also noted that there was no problem

deviating from priorities if there were legitimate reasons for doing so, such

as significant nonpriority cases to prosecute.

Most of the U.S. Attorneys we visited told us that designating a particular

crime type as a priority generally meant that it received more resources

than nonpriority crime types. For example, assigning assistant U.S.

Attorneys to enforcement task forces or special prosecutive units were

ways to emphasize priority crime areas.

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One U.S. Attorney

Used a More Formal

Process to Set

Priorities Than the

Other Districts We

Visited

One district we visited, Maryland, used a new, more formal process than

the other seven districts we visited for setting prosecutive priorities in

1994. According to Maryland’s U.S. Attorney, in the first step of the

process, her office determined the crime concerns in the district and the

appropriate federal responses through meetings with business and

community leaders and state and local law enforcement officials

throughout the state. She said that she and her staff also met with officials

of the federal law enforcement agencies working in the district. The FBI

and DEA, for example, provided information on significant areas affecting

community safety and security under their jurisdictions. Representatives

of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the U.S. Secret Service provided

information on postal theft and counterfeiting issues.

In a March 1994 memorandum, the U.S. Attorney announced a

reorganization of her office according to priority program areas, which

were based on input from within her office and their client law

enforcement agencies. Prosecutors were assigned to work in specific

priority areas. Under each of the priority areas, the U.S. Attorney identified

the types of cases that the investigative agencies should develop and/or

strategies to use in investigating those cases. She also revised prosecutive

guidelines to emphasize the priority crime areas.

At the time of our review, it was too soon to determine whether the new

process was judged by law enforcement officials in the district to be an

improvement in the U.S. Attorneys’ Office operating procedures.

U.S. Attorneys

Coordinated With

Investigative Agencies

on Priorities

All of the eight U.S. Attorneys we visited said that they coordinated their

priorities with federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Representatives of federal investigative agencies we visited generally

indicated that they had a good understanding of the types of cases the U.S.

Attorneys would accept for prosecution and that their priorities were

closely or adequately coordinated with those of the U.S. Attorneys.

Interaction with federal investigative agencies influenced the priorities

developed by the U.S. Attorneys we visited in a variety of ways. One U.S.

Attorney, for example, told us that in developing priorities, she routinely

considered information provided by federal and state investigative

agencies. In this district, telemarketing fraud was designated a priority on

the basis of consultations with the federal investigative agencies. Another

U.S. Attorney said he emphasized specific violent crimes, such as

carjackings, in part on the basis of the results of meetings with officials of

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the FBI, DEA, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and

Firearms (ATF), and other law enforcement agencies in his district.

To gain an understanding of how well they felt they understood the

priorities of the U.S. Attorneys with whom they worked, we interviewed 63

federal investigative agency supervisors in the 8 districts. We asked the

supervisors whether they felt that they had a good understanding of the

types of cases the U.S. Attorneys in their jurisdictions would accept for

prosecution. Fifty-nine of the interviewees said that they had a good

understanding of the priorities, while four said that they did not.

The interviewees said that the U.S. Attorney’s priorities were

communicated to them via written prosecutive guidelines and through

ongoing informal communication among agents and assistant U.S.

Attorneys. The lines of communication included discussions of ongoing

cases and conversations at law enforcement meetings. Several

interviewees also noted that U.S. Attorneys’ priorities were communicated

by the allocation of resources, with more attorneys assigned to work on

priority cases.

We asked these investigative agency supervisors to describe the

interrelationship between their investigative agencies’ priorities and the

U.S. Attorney’s priorities by choosing a response from among the

following categories:

• Our priorities and those of the U.S. Attorney are closely coordinated.

• Our priorities and those of the U.S. Attorney are adequately coordinated.

• Our priorities and those of the U.S. Attorney are not adequately

coordinated.

• None of these responses describes the interrelationship.

The vast majority of investigative agency supervisors we interviewed

thought that priorities were at least adequately coordinated. Thirty-five

interviewees said that their priorities and those of the U.S. Attorney for the

district were closely coordinated. Nineteen interviewees said that the

priorities were adequately coordinated. Two interviewees said that

priorities were not adequately coordinated, and seven interviewees did not

select any of these responses to the structured interview question. In the

two instances in two different districts that interviewees said priorities

were not adequately coordinated, the reason given was that the priorities

of their agencies did not match those of the U.S. Attorney.

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U.S. Attorneys we visited also received informal input from state

prosecutors, especially in the area of violent crime. U.S. Attorneys said

that they usually became aware of the state prosecutors’ priorities by

meeting informally with them on cases with state and federal implications

or through participation in task forces.

State prosecutors’ priorities indirectly affected some U.S. Attorneys’

priorities. For example, one U.S. Attorney said that her office worked

closely with the state on violent crime cases and that historically this

relationship had worked well. However, recent state legislation increasing

state penalties has caused both sides to re-examine their roles in violent

crime prosecutions.

Efforts to Measure

Prosecutive

Performance Differ

U.S. Attorneys we visited had no discrete processes for measuring the

effectiveness of their prosecutive activities, but they said that information

from a variety of sources provided indicators of the effectiveness of their

operations in fighting crime in their districts. EOUSA’s primary evaluation

mechanism was its evaluation program, under which a broad review of the

overall operations of each U.S. Attorney’s Office was conducted every

several years. According to program instructions, the evaluation was to

include an assessment of how U.S. Attorneys were implementing the

Attorney General’s priorities. The subject of priorities was generally

covered broadly, if at all, in the evaluation reports we reviewed; and

Justice did not require that U.S. Attorneys implement recommendations

made by evaluation teams.

U.S. Attorneys We Visited

Cited a Variety of

Subjective Measures of

Effectiveness

In discussions on how they determined their effectiveness in addressing

crime in their districts, U.S. Attorneys we visited did not cite any single

objective measure, but they noted several subjective forms of feedback

and information from a variety of sources that could provide indicators of

effectiveness. For example, several U.S. Attorneys said that they gauged

the general effectiveness of their offices through discussions with and/or

feedback from their staffs and the investigative agencies. Other U.S.

Attorneys mentioned, as indicators of effectiveness, the number of cases

they prosecuted and decreases in certain types of criminal activity in the

district. Also mentioned by U.S. Attorneys as effectiveness measures were

economic indicators, such as the price of drugs, and success in

coordinating the efforts of various law enforcement agencies in the

district. A supervisor in one U.S. Attorney’s Office believed that

effectiveness could be measured by the impact that cases had on the

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community. For example, he said that dismantling the leadership of an

organized crime group or foiling a major plot to distribute drugs could

have significant impact. However, the U.S. Attorney had no formal

performance measures to assess the impact such prosecutions had on

illegal activities in the district.

Justice’s Evaluation

Reports for Most Offices

We Visited Gave Little

Attention to

Implementation of

Priorities

According to EOUSA officials, Justice’s primary mechanism for assessing

the activities of U.S. Attorney Offices, including how U.S. Attorneys were

implementing the Attorney General’s priorities, was its evaluation

program. The subject of priorities was generally covered broadly, if at all,

in the evaluation reports we reviewed; and Justice did not require U.S.

Attorneys to implement the evaluation teams’ recommendations.

According to an evaluation program manager, evaluation teams composed

of Assistant U.S. Attorneys visited each U.S. Attorney’s Office every 3 to 4

years to perform a broad review of its overall operations. About 115 to 120

Assistant U.S. Attorneys served as evaluators, doing three or fewer

evaluations each year. Evaluation program guidance required that teams

be led by a legal management evaluator, who was responsible for

coordinating and managing all pre-evaluation activities, the on-site

evaluation, and the submission of written evaluation reports.

Administrative and financial litigation evaluations were conducted

simultaneously with legal management evaluations, resulting in reviews of

U.S. Attorneys’ entire operations.

As required by EOUSA’s Evaluation Manual, at the end of each on-site visit,

the evaluation team was to provide a briefing on preliminary findings to

the U.S. Attorney and any key staff the U.S. Attorney invited to attend. The

team was then to prepare a draft written report for submission to EOUSA.

According to EOUSA officials, the EOUSA director was to forward the draft

report to the U.S. Attorney, who was responsible for reviewing it and

responding to, but not necessarily implementing, any recommendations. If

the evaluation team was satisfied with the U.S. Attorney’s action or

proposed action to address a recommendation or was convinced by the

U.S. Attorney that the recommendation was not appropriate, the

recommendation was to be dropped from the final report.

One of the purposes of the evaluation program was to determine whether

the Attorney General’s priorities were being carried out by the U.S.

Attorneys. The evaluation team was to make this determination primarily

on the basis of interviews of personnel. Other methodologies available to

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them included examination of case management data and reviews of

cases. According to an EOUSA representative, however, evaluators did not

look at actual case files unless some problem was identified. Evaluators, in

conducting their evaluations, generally looked at printouts from the case

tracking systems and relied heavily on the results of interviews with

personnel in the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.

Our review of 10 legal management evaluation reports prepared during the

period from 1990 through 1993 for the 8 districts we visited showed

variance in the extent to which compliance with national priorities was

specifically reported. In seven of the evaluation reports, evaluators made

no written assessment of whether or not national priorities were

addressed. In another two evaluation reports, evaluators made general

assessments about whether national priorities were addressed. In one

evaluation report, evaluators treated the issue of national priorities in

some detail, relating resources and case reviews to priorities.

The general statements made about work in national priority areas in two

reports were:

• Overall cases here are quality cases. Many are very complex and high

profile. The cases brought are consistent with the priorities of the Attorney

General.

• The office is doing a very good job of conducting the government’s

litigation. Justice priorities and policies are followed and applied

appropriately.

A summary of the evaluation comments relating priorities to resources and

case reviews in more detail follows:

• The office seems posed and prepared to address any of the law

enforcement priorities set nationally by the Attorney General, as well as

those that have emerged from district-level criminal problems. This

commitment to well-defined law enforcement goals is reflected in the

prosecution teams set in place by the U.S. Attorney. He is well aware, for

example, that there is a large number of toxic dump sites in his district and

has tasked . . . a unit to step up enforcement efforts in all environmental

matters. The same high priority and follow-through is evident in the area

of defense procurement fraud. Hard-hitting enforcement efforts against

drug traffickers is a clear priority, and the dedication of five full-time

Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the task demonstrates that priority.

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The Evaluation Manual, as updated in July 1993, contained a section on

recommendations, but it did not state whether in any instances such

recommendations were binding on U.S. Attorneys. An EOUSA official said

that U.S. Attorneys were in the best position to know how to direct the

resources of their districts to crime categories. He said that draft

evaluation team recommendations were reviewed by the EOUSA director

and deputy director. Before issuing the final evaluation reports, evaluators

were to follow up to see if any changes were made on the basis of the

evaluation results, but U.S. Attorneys were not required to make any of the

recommended changes to their operations. The official said that EOUSA

planned to consider having a team available to help U.S. Attorneys

implement recommendations.

In commenting on a draft of this report, EOUSA said that the vast majority

of the recommendations made by evaluators have been implemented by

U.S. Attorneys. It said that the EOUSA director or deputy director or the

Deputy Attorney General would have required implementation of a

significant or important recommendation if the reasons for not doing so

were flawed, and it noted that fact would not necessarily be known by

individual members of EOUSA’s evaluation and review staff.

EOUSA also noted in its comments that changes were made to the

evaluation program in l994 including updated training of evaluators and

additional methods to determine whether the Department’s priorities were

being addressed appropriately. These methods included review of

dedicated attorney and support resources to certain types of crimes and

interviews with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

Caseload and

Workload Data

Appeared to Be

Inaccurate

Due to the apparent unreliability of some data and the lack of other data,

EOUSA could not fully use its existing information systems to determine

how U.S. Attorneys were addressing national and local prosecutorial

priorities. Assessments of what information will be required and how to

ensure its accuracy are indispensable if EOUSA is to rely on its information

system to help measure performance, as envisioned by the GPRA.

The Attorney General, in seeking input from Justice components to the

Department’s fiscal year 1996 budget request, asked for a review of

existing data to identify which elements would be useful as indicators of

performance and which elements would not be helpful.

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The Attorney General’s instructions stated the following:

“In selecting performance indicators, components should completely review all existing

workload data and adapt those items that are useful and results-oriented. Component

program, planning/evaluation, and budget offices are urged to work together to develop

new performance indicators that focus on program outputs and outcomes, and less on

program input and process indicators.

[Text omitted.]

“It is recognized and expected that in a number of instances, new indicators will be

identified for which no baseline data are available.”

Some existing measures of U.S. Attorneys’ Offices workloads and

caseloads were inaccurate, limiting their usefulness in measuring

performance and responsiveness of U.S. Attorneys to addressing national

priorities. Officials at Justice headquarters and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices told

us that some statistical data in the case management system and in the

system used to track attorney time were inaccurate and incomplete.

Evaluation reports on several of the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we reviewed

also documented inaccuracies in these systems. EOUSA has not studied the

reliability of its case management information system by checking data

against case files in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. However, EOUSA had a project

underway aimed at improving the quality of the automated data.

The caseload and workload data systems did not collect some information

that could have been useful in determining how U.S. Attorneys were

addressing national and local priorities, as well as serving other resource

management purposes and measuring performance as required by the

GPRA. For example, Justice did not measure the complexity of the cases

prosecuted. It would be difficult to measure performance without knowing

whether cases reported in the information system were complex,

time-consuming cases, or comparatively simple cases involving little

prosecutor time. Nor did Justice account for time spent by prosecutors on

other than case-specific activities, such as coordinating task forces,

conducting crime surveys, and developing prosecutive strategies with

state and local officials, as finite categories of resource use. Knowledge of

the time spent on such nonprosecutive activities would have been helpful

to the Attorney General since she has asked prosecutors to do work

involving planning, coordinating, and managing law enforcement

resources.

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In commenting on a draft of this report, EOUSA stated that it had begun to

account for time spent by prosecutors on other than case-specific

activities. It cited as an example that, as of October 1994, it included time

spent in areas related to community coalition building, Weed and Seed,

and/or Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee (LECC) programs in the

time category of “Crime Prevention/LECC.”

Some Case Management

Data Appeared Unreliable

We did not make a reliability assessment of the automated information

systems used by EOUSA to produce annual statistical reports on U.S.

Attorneys’ caseloads. However, on the basis of discussions with

representatives of EOUSA and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and review of

evaluation reports on the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited, it appeared

that the data did not accurately reflect the caseloads and workloads of all

of the offices. EOUSA and U.S. Attorneys’ Office officials told us that some

caseload statistics were more reliable than others. The number of cases

filed by U.S. Attorneys in federal district court was one data element that

information management officials said was particularly reliable because it

could be checked against statistics maintained by the courts.

Because offices we visited used different criteria to count cases and

declinations (criminal matters that were not prosecuted), comparisons of

caseloads among districts could be misleading. For example, EOUSA

officials said that there was some variation in the way different U.S.

Attorneys counted criminal matters and some declinations. Several offices

we visited did not include misdemeanors in their caseload statistics. But

one office did include such data, thereby giving its criminal caseload the

appearance of being larger than it actually was relative to other offices. A

data analyst in a large office said that double-counting of defendants was

routine. She said that defendants were sometimes listed under their names

and again listed under the names of their criminal operations. She also

noted that if two Assistant U.S. Attorneys were involved in a trial, the trial

may be counted twice in the data management system because both

attorneys would have noted it in their personal statistics.

EOUSA evaluations of the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we reviewed, conducted

from 1991 through 1993, documented problems with the reliability and

usefulness of the case management systems. Only 1 evaluation of the 10

evaluations we reviewed reported that the case information system was

generally accurate and used by the U.S. Attorney as a management tool.

Eight evaluations reported problems of varying degrees of seriousness,

while the reliability and usefulness of the case management system was

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not reported in one evaluation. Examples of some of the problems noted

follow:

• One evaluation team found that nearly 300 cases in 1 office were assigned

to “mystery” Assistant U.S. Attorneys who did not appear on any office

rosters. This evaluation team found over 1,000 cases that they thought

could be eliminated from the civil case docket of about 5,000 cases.

• At another location, an evaluation team found case lists from the

information system to be “chronically incorrect” and noted that

improvements were needed to keep track of workload and to avoid

spending extraordinary amounts of time trying to correct the information.

• A third evaluation team noted that it appeared that cases were being

carried when there was no activity, thereby artificially inflating the

caseload.

Efforts to Improve Case

Management Information

According to the EOUSA Information Systems Manager, EOUSA tried to

improve the accuracy of the case management data, but had not attempted

to verify its accuracy by matching data on the information management

system to records in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. EOUSA consolidated data tapes

from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and produced listings identifying some errors,

such as nonexistent crime codes. EOUSA also worked on improving the

quality of its case-tracking systems in an effort called “Operation Garbage

Out.” The goals of this effort were to update the databases in each U.S.

Attorney’s Office to reflect correct and current information, provide

training in using the data system, recommend steps to improve the quality

of the data system, and increase management accountability for and line

attorney involvement in the quality of the local database.

In phase one of the effort, U.S. Attorneys were asked to review all pending

cases that were older than 5 years and close those cases that needed to be

closed. As a result of this effort, more than 10 percent of the U.S.

Attorneys’ pending caseloads were dropped. In phase two, U.S. Attorneys

were asked to certify that all cases, not just the old cases, had been

reviewed to ensure that they were classified accurately. Phase three

involved EOUSA looking at case management data in greater detail, four

districts at a time, focusing on errors that were common across districts.

The results of the later phases of the Operation Garbage Out effort were

not available at the time of our review.

An EOUSA official said that there had been some discussion about possibly

checking the validity of data reported on the case management system

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against records in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, but no decision had been made

on whether to do such a validity check. As of December 1994, the EOUSA

Information Systems Manager said that discussions about a new formal

program for information quality management were underway, but no

timeframe had been set on when the program would be implemented.

The official said that plans were also being made for developing a new

case management system and introducing it nationally for all U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices in mid-1996. One improvement she anticipated with the

new system was that it would allow for inclusion of specialized

information on priority programs.

Some Workload Data

Appeared Inaccurate

Discussions with personnel in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and review of

evaluation reports on the U.S. Attorney Offices we visited indicated that

data on the amount of time prosecutors spend on various prosecutive

activities were inaccurate. According to EOUSA officials, prosecutors

completed resource summary reports (USA Form 5) at least monthly,

estimating the percentage of time they spent working during the month in

24 criminal division crime categories and 25 civil division categories. No

guidance existed on how prosecutors were to determine which categories

to use for various types of work. In commenting on a draft of our report,

EOUSA provided guidance dated December 27, 1994, on how to charge time

to various categories of criminal and civil cases.

Administrative staff were to compile the information on all of the USA

Form 5s completed in their offices and send it to EOUSA each month. EOUSA

was to consolidate the information into a single database. During our

review, EOUSA was working toward automated transmission of USA Form 5

data from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to Justice headquarters.

Representatives of some of the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited indicated

that the time-tracking data were inaccurate and unreliable. One concern

expressed was that some attorneys were not diligent in reporting their

time; therefore, work was underreported or did not accurately reflect the

types of prosecutions the office handled. Another concern was that there

was uncertainty about which time categories to charge for some work,

particularly on economic crime cases. One Assistant U.S. Attorney said,

for example, that distinctions between credit card fraud and bank fraud or

credit card fraud and telemarketing fraud were not always clear. Thus,

data on hours worked on each of these crime types could be inconsistent

from one office to another and one attorney to another.

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Evaluation reports we reviewed also documented inaccuracies in

reporting time spent on various types of cases. For example, one

evaluation report noted that civil section attorneys in the office completed

USA Form 5s monthly from memory or by estimation. Another evaluation

report found that some prosecutors were reluctant to keep and report

necessary USA Form 5 information, although the administrative officer

indicated that continued efforts were being made to get all staff to

cooperate.

EOUSA officials said that no efforts had been made to verify the accuracy of

the data showing attorney time spent on various types of cases.

Additional Management

Information Could Be

Useful

In the course of our review, we noted two measures that Justice did not

include in its information systems that could have helped to assess how

U.S. Attorneys addressed priority programs. These measures may have

also served other management purposes, such as resource allocation and

performance measurement, as required by the GPRA. These measures were

(1) attorney time spent on coordination, outreach, and other

nonprosecutive functions and (2) case complexity.

Knowledge of the time spent on nonprosecutive activities would have

been helpful to the Attorney General since she asked prosecutors to do

work involving planning, coordinating, and managing law enforcement

resources and community outreach. The resource summary information

system that was in place at the time of our review did not measure time

spent by attorneys on these functions.

A key challenge that the Attorney General gave U.S. Attorneys at their

January 1994 conference was to increase their efforts to coordinate the

work of law enforcement agencies to avoid overlap and direct

investigative resources in the best manner possible. Also, a key component

of Justice’s antiviolent crime initiative is to cooperate with other law

enforcement authorities. The work that the U.S. Attorneys put into the

initiative by organizing and attending task force meetings and surveying

the law enforcement community was not reflected in raw numbers of

cases.

We asked supervisory attorneys in several U.S. Attorneys’ Offices how

they accounted for time spent on such tasks as planning, coordinating task

forces, and surveying the community about crime concerns. The attorneys

said the time would probably come under a particular crime type such as

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“violent crime,” or under the general category of “management and

administration.” They said that distinctions between time spent on

prosecutive functions versus planning, community outreach, and

coordinating and managing resources was not reflected.

One supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney noted that some of the work in his

office was not really measured by any time-charge activity. He said

attorneys spent a fair amount of time talking to high schools and

community groups; helping police departments apply for grants; bringing

federal, state, and local investigative resources together to address crime

problems; and doing other types of nonprosecutive tasks. The attorney

said that such time would have been charged in his office either to the

subject matter of the meetings or to a general category of management and

administration.

It is difficult to measure performance without knowing whether cases

reported in the information system are complex, time-consuming cases or

comparatively simple cases that involve little prosecutor time. Justice does

not assess the complexity, quality, or impact of cases prosecuted, although

two U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited made assessments of case

complexity on their own. Supervisors assigned complexity ratings to cases

on scales from one to three.

A case filed is statistically one case whether it was a plea-bargained,

relatively low-level drug prosecution requiring a few hours of one

prosecutor’s time or a complex drug trafficking conspiracy case that took

several years and a large amount of attorney resources to prosecute. The

amount of time spent by attorneys prosecuting various cases could serve

as one indicator of complexity.

The EOUSA Information Systems Manager said that the new information

management system, scheduled to be piloted during 1995, would have a

data field for offices to assign complexity weightings to cases. However,

no data on that field would be collected nationally. U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

would have the option to use or not use the field as a local management

tool. The manager noted that without specific case weighting criteria,

offices might tend to skew weights to the high side if they were being

compared to case weights in other offices.

Conclusions As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and head of the Justice

Department, the Attorney General is responsible and accountable to

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Congress for ensuring that the federal law enforcement components

within Justice are effectively coordinated, that Justice resources are

effectively applied, and that national law enforcement priorities are

addressed appropriately. Enactment of the GPRA reinforces the importance

of these responsibilities. To accomplish them, the Attorney General needs

clear information on how U.S. Attorney resources are directed nationwide

to various law enforcement priorities.

At the same time, U.S. Attorneys need to retain flexibility to address the

specific crime problems that exist in their districts and to adapt national

priorities to best meet local conditions. Close consultation between

Justice and the U.S. Attorneys is essential to strike an appropriate balance.

The Attorney General’s recent identification and ranking of two top

national priorities moved Justice in the direction of setting more focused

national law enforcement priorities, as did her requirement that U.S.

Attorneys take actions to implement the two priorities. While these steps

focused national priorities, they also afforded U.S. Attorneys considerable

discretion in deciding which specific steps to take in their districts to

implement the two priorities.

More accurate and complete data would help Justice to better determine

how U.S. Attorneys are implementing national and local priority programs

and to comply with the GPRA. Although EOUSA was continuing to take steps

to improve the accuracy of its information systems, the caseload and

workload data contained inaccuracies that could hinder Justice’s efforts to

measure performance and track how well U.S. Attorneys are implementing

national priorities and otherwise applying their resources. As Justice

moves into the GPRA environment and considers whether data elements

that it collected in the past are needed to measure performance and results

and whether additional data elements would be useful as performance

indicators, it will be important to ensure that the data it collects are

complete and accurate.

Recommendation We recommend that, as the Department of Justice evaluates what data will

be selected as indicators of U.S. Attorney performance to meet the GPRA

requirements, the Attorney General direct EOUSA to develop quality control

measures to ensure the accuracy of the data to be collected. EOUSA should

give specific consideration to developing measures of case complexity to

be used by all U.S. Attorneys.

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Agency Comments We provided a draft of this report for comment to the Attorney General

and received comments from the Director of EOUSA. The comments and

our responses are summarized below. EOUSA’s comments are reprinted in

appendix III.

EOUSA reiterated that in our review of eight different U.S. Attorneys’

Offices of varying sizes, serving communities with diverse demographic

characteristics, none was unaware or neglectful of the Attorney General’s

priorities.

In the draft of this report, we suggested that EOUSA consider establishing

workload categories to measure time spent on nonprosecutive attorney

activities, such as organizing and attending task force meetings. EOUSA said

that as of October 1994, it began to account for time spent by attorneys on

other than case-specific activities, and because of this, we did not include

the suggestion in our final report. EOUSA also said that our statement that it

did not have guidance for attorneys on how to charge time to various types

of cases was inaccurate. The guidance EOUSA provided to illustrate this

point was dated December 27, 1994, which was after our audit work was

completed. We added this information to the report.

EOUSA noted difficulties that would arise in developing measures of case

complexity to be used by all U.S. Attorneys and said that it may not be

feasible to develop such measures. However, experiences of individual

U.S. Attorneys may be of value in exploring ways to measure complexity.

Two of the eight U.S. Attorneys we visited had developed systems of rating

complexity on scales of one to three. In addition, we were advised that the

Deputy Attorney General’s Office was exploring the use of full-time

attorney equivalents charged to cases as a measure of case complexity to

help make decisions on staffing allocations for U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. If

more work time goes into prosecuting a smaller number of fraud cases

compared to a larger number of drug cases, that would be an indicator of

complexity. If standards for measuring complexity were developed for use

by all U.S. Attorneys, the EOUSA evaluation program could serve as a means

to assess the consistency in which various U.S. Attorneys apply the

standards for their caseloads.

We agree that development of a system to measure case complexity is a

difficult challenge. However, unless EOUSA attempts to do so, it will not

have definitive data on feasibility. Without knowing whether cases

reported in the information system are complex and time-consuming or

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comparatively simple cases involving little prosecutor time, performance

measurement will have little objective value.

EOUSA did not mention our recommendation that it develop quality control

measures to ensure the accuracy of data to be collected as performance

indicators. However, the senior counsel to EOUSA’s director told us, in a

follow-up discussion, that EOUSA generally agrees with the

recommendation and is continuing to work to improve the accuracy of its

data.

EOUSA stated that its evaluation program remains the primary mechanism

for monitoring U.S. Attorneys’ implementation of priority programs, but

noted that, as we relied on evaluation reports done between 1990 and

1993, we did not take into account changes in the process that began in

1994. For example, EOUSA said that evaluation reports are being modified

to report priority programs in a more organized and recognizable format.

We agree that we did not assess any improvements to the program that

occurred in 1994 because our methodology for reviewing evaluation

reports was to obtain the most recent reports available for each of the

eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited. For the Districts of Maine and

Eastern New York, we reviewed evaluations done in 1990 and the final

reports for evaluations done in 1993 when they became available. As noted

in our report, evaluation teams visit U.S. Attorneys Office about every 3 to

4 years. In addition, there was a lag time of several months between the

date of the evaluation and the date the final report was available for our

review. Thus, we assessed all of the evaluation reports available during the

course of our audit work.

EOUSA disagreed with a statement in our report that, according to an EOUSA

official, U.S. Attorneys were not required to make changes to their

operations recommended by evaluation teams. EOUSA stated that members

of its evaluation and review staff may not be aware that top EOUSA

management or the Deputy Attorney General could require a U.S. Attorney

to implement a specific recommendation. EOUSA did not provide any

specifics on processes through which such a requirement would be made,

nor examples of when or how often such requirements are made of U.S.

Attorneys. The handbook followed for legal management evaluations, as

updated in July 1993, contained a section on recommendations, but it did

not state whether in any instances such recommendations were binding on

U.S. Attorneys. Because this information was not specified in the written

guidance, we followed up with EOUSA’s director for evaluation and review

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and included in our report his statement that recommendations were not

binding.

We are sending copies of this report to the Attorney General, the Office of

Management and Budget, and the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

It will also be made available to others upon request.

Major contributors are listed in appendix IV. If you have any questions,

please contact me on (202) 512-8777.

Norman J. Rabkin

Director, Administration

 of Justice Issues

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Page 29 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Contents

Letter 1

Appendixes Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 32

Appendix II: Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal Caseloads

and Workloads Nationwide and for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

38

Appendix III: Comments From the Department of Justice 66

Appendix IV: Major Contributors to This Report 73

Tables Table I.1: Criminal and Civil Cases Filed in District Court in the

Districts We Visited and Nationally

34

Table I.2: Full-Time Equivalent Attorney Positions in the Districts

We Visited and Nationally

35

Table I.3: Law Enforcement Agencies Selected for Supplemental

Interview by U.S. Attorney District

36

Figures Figure II.1: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed

Nationwide 

40

Figure II.2: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

Central District of California 

41

Figure II.3: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

Southern District of Florida 

42

Figure II.4: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

District of Maine 

43

Figure II.5: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

District of Maryland 

44

Figure II.6: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

Western District of Michigan 

45

Figure II. 7: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

Eastern District of New York 

46

Figure II.8: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

Southern District of New York 

47

Figure II.9: Type and Percent of Total Criminal Cases Filed in the

Northern District of Texas 

48

Figure II.10: Percent of Drug Cases Filed Nationally and in U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices We Visited 

49

Figure II.11: Percent of Economic/White-Collar Cases Filed

Nationally and in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices We Visited 

50

Figure II.12: Percent of Violent Crime Cases Filed Nationally and

in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices We Visited 

51

Page 30 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Contents

Figure II.13: Percent of All Other Crime Cases Filed Nationally

and in the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices We Visited

52

Figure II.14: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions Nationwide 

53

Figure II.15: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the Central District of California 

54

Figure II.16: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the Southern District of Florida 

55

Figure II.17: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the District of Maine 

56

Figure II.18: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the District of Maryland 

57

Figure II.19: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the Western District of Michigan 

58

Figure II.20: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the Eastern District of New York 

59

Figure II.21: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the Southern District of New York 

60

Figure II.22: Percent and Type of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal

Attorney Positions in the Northern District of Texas 

61

Figure II.23: Percent of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions Spent on Drug Cases 

62

Figure II.24: Percent of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions Spent on Economic/White-Collar Cases 

63

Figure II.25: Percent of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions Spent on Violent Crime Cases 

64

Figure II.26: Percent of Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions Spent on Other Crime Cases 

65

Abbreviations

ATF Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

DEA Drug Enforcement Administration

EOUSA Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation

GPRA Government Performance and Results Act of 1993

INS Immigration and Naturalization Service

IRS Internal Revenue Service

LECC Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee

OMB Office of Management and Budget

Page 31 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

The Chairman of the former House Government Operations Subcommittee

on Government Information, Justice, and Agriculture1

 asked us to review

several issues relating to U.S. Attorneys’ prosecutorial priorities.

Specifically, we agreed to determine the following:

• how the Department of Justice communicates national prosecutorial

priorities to U.S. Attorneys;

• how selected U.S. Attorneys establish their priorities, including whether

they consider national prosecutorial priorities and coordinate their

priorities with those of federal law enforcement agencies and state

prosecutors; and

• what, if any, measures Justice uses to assess U.S. Attorneys’ effectiveness

in meeting national priorities.

To address the first objective, we interviewed Justice officials and

obtained documentation on how national prosecutorial priorities are

developed and communicated. We reviewed budget memorandums

addressing priorities, as well as Attorney General speeches, testimonies,

and communications. We also asked U.S. Attorneys how national priorities

were communicated to them.

To address the second objective, we did structured interviews in eight U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices. We interviewed U.S. Attorneys2

 and key staff in each

U.S. Attorneys’ Office. We also did structured interviews with officials of

eight federal investigative agencies and a state prosecutor in each U.S.

Attorney district to address how U.S. Attorneys’ priorities were

communicated and whether they were coordinated with other law

enforcement officials.

In addressing the second objective, we also reviewed case management

data on the number of cases and matters filed and declined by type of

crime for fiscal years 1980 through 1993. We reviewed data on U.S.

Attorney work years for fiscal years 1980 through 1993, and we reviewed

data on hours attorneys spent working on various types of cases nationally

and for the eight selected districts for fiscal year 1993. We reviewed

1

In the 104th Congress, jurisdiction changed to the newly established Subcommittee on National

Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice of the Committee on Government Reform and

Oversight.

2

In the Southern District of New York we interviewed a first assistant U.S. Attorney who was an Acting

U.S. Attorney at the time of our visit.

Page 32 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

guidelines established by the eight U.S. Attorneys for determining whether

to accept cases for federal prosecution.

To address the third objective, we interviewed Justice officials and U.S.

Attorneys and reviewed evaluation reports to determine what qualitative

and quantitative measures were in place to evaluate the effectiveness of

the operations of the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. The Government

Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 requires federal agencies to

implement a system to set goals, measure performance, and report results.

We focused our discussions for this objective on the status of efforts by

Justice to comply with the law.

Selection of U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices

Table I.1 lists the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited and provides

information on the criminal and civil cases filed in each office during fiscal

year 1993. The districts were the Central District of California, the

Southern District of Florida, the Western District of Michigan, the Eastern

and Southern Districts of New York, the Northern District of Texas, and

the Districts of Maine and Maryland. We judgmentally selected these

districts to include various geographical regions of the country and small,

medium, and large offices.

Table I.1 also shows that the eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices combined filed

about 18 percent of both the criminal and civil cases that were filed in

district courts in fiscal year 1993.

Page 33 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Table I.1: Criminal and Civil Cases

Filed in District Court in the Districts

We Visited and Nationally (Fiscal Year

1993) District

Criminal

cases filed

in court

Criminal

defendants

filed in

court

Civil cases

filed in

court

California, Central 1,271 1,921 3,633

Florida, South 1,100 2,045 2,641

Maine 112 149 426

Maryland 458 625 603

Michigan, West 241 392 685

New York, East 1,380 2,052 3,657

New York, South 1,263 1,881 2,039

Texas, North 867 1,484 3,356

Total for districts we visited 6,692 10,549 17,040

Total for all districts 36,995 56,814 94,092

Districts we visited as a percent

of all U.S. attorney districts

18.1% 18.6% 18.1%

Source: United States Attorneys’ Offices Fiscal Year 1993 Statistical Report.

The eight districts also filed about 21 percent of all asset forfeiture cases

(criminal and civil) filed nationally in fiscal year 1993 and collected about

18 percent of the estimated cash and property recoveries. They collected

about 14 percent of the total debts collected by U.S. Attorneys nationwide

in bankruptcies, foreclosures, and other civil debt and property

collections.

As shown in table I.2, the number of attorney positions in the eight

districts we visited ranged from 19 full-time equivalent attorney positions

in the district of Maine to 206 full-time equivalent attorney positions in the

Southern District of Florida. Combined, the eight districts had about

22 percent of the total attorney positions nationwide.

Page 34 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Table I.2: Full-Time Equivalent

Attorney Positions in the Districts We

Visited and Nationally (Fiscal Year

1993) 

District Positions

California, Central 202

Florida, South 206

Maine 19

Maryland 61

Michigan, West 29

New York, East 140

New York, South 187

Texas, North 78

Total for districts we visited 922

Total for all districts 4,161

Districts we visited as a percent of all U.S. attorney districts 22.2%

Source: United States Attorneys’ Offices Workload Statistics, fiscal year 1993.

Selection of

Interviewees

We did structured interviews with U.S. Attorneys or acting U.S. Attorneys

and their first assistants and the chiefs of their criminal and civil divisions

in the eight districts. We asked them how they established priorities for

their offices, how national priorities were communicated to them, how

they coordinated priorities with federal, state, and local investigative

agencies and with state prosecutors, and how they measured their

effectiveness in the mission of fighting crime in their districts. We

pretested the structured interview instruments with U.S. Attorneys’ Office

representatives in Southern New York and Maryland, and we made

clarifications and refinements on the basis of the comments we received.

We also talked with other division and section chiefs in these offices about

prosecutions of specific types of cases, and we talked with personnel

responsible for the data management systems about how information on

caseload and workload was compiled.

In addition, we did structured interviews with representatives of

investigative agency field offices and with one state prosecutor in each of

the eight court districts. We asked investigative agency personnel for

general information about their caseloads, workloads, and priorities, as

well as how they coordinated their priorities with the U.S. Attorney. We

asked the state prosecutors how the U.S. Attorney coordinated priorities

with them and how the priorities of the U.S. Attorney affected the

operations of their offices.

Page 35 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Investigative agency interviewees included field personnel for the Justice

investigative agencies. These were the Federal Bureau of Investigation

(FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Immigration and

Naturalization Service (INS). We interviewed representatives of the

Treasury Department investigative agencies. These agencies were the

Secret Service, Customs Service, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal

Division, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). We also

interviewed representatives from two other judgmentally selected

agencies in each district. We pretested these interview instruments with

selected law enforcement personnel in the Eastern and Southern Districts

of New York and the District of Maryland before we used them in the other

locations.

Table I.3 lists the judgmentally selected agencies we selected to interview

in each field location. We met with special agents-in-charge and/or agents

closely involved in dealings with the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we reviewed.

Table I.3: Law Enforcement Agencies

Selected for Supplemental Interview by

U.S. Attorney District District

Investigative agencies selected for

supplemental interviews

California, Central Postal Inspection Service, Postal Service

Defense Criminal Investigative Service, DOD

Florida, South Office of the Inspector General, HHS

Criminal Investigations Division, EPA

Maine Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the

Interior

Criminal Investigations Division, EPA

Maryland Office of the Inspector General, HHS

Criminal Investigations Division, EPA

Michigan, West Office of the Inspector General, HHS

Postal Inspection Service, Postal Service

New York, East and South Office of the Inspector General, HHS

Criminal Investigations Division, EPA

Texas, North Office of the Inspector General, HHS

Criminal Investigations Division, EPA

Legend

DOD - Department of Defense

HHS - Department of Health and Human Services

EPA - Environmental Protection Agency

Source: GAO.

Page 36 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

The field work provided information on how priorities were addressed in

various U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and officials’ views on a variety of issues

and concerns about priority setting and how best to use limited law

enforcement resources, but they did not constitute a representative or

statistically valid sample of opinions.

Page 37 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

U.S. Attorneys’

Criminal Caseloads

and Workloads Varied

Analysis of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys’ (EOUSA) statistics on

criminal caseloads and workloads for each of the eight U.S. Attorneys’

Offices we visited showed that most cases filed and time spent

corresponded to the stated priorities of the U.S. Attorneys. Criminal

caseload and workload were concentrated in 3 broad program areas in

these offices and for the 93 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices nationwide. These

areas were drug,1

 economic/white-collar,2 and violent crimes.3 The eight

offices we visited also had organizational units dedicated to at least two of

these three program areas.

Caseloads and attorney time spent within the three broad program areas

of drug, economic/white-collar, and violent crimes varied in the offices we

visited. For example, drug cases filed ranged from 13 percent to 49 percent

of the total criminal caseload in these offices. Attorney time spent on

economic/white-collar crime prosecutions ranged from 25 percent to

48 percent of total attorney time spent on criminal prosecutions.

Our caseload analysis was based on statistics on criminal cases filed by

U.S. Attorneys in federal district courts during fiscal year 1993. Based on

discussions with headquarters and district information management

system personnel, cases filed appeared to be the most reliable statistic in

the EOUSA case management system. Our workload analysis used EOUSA

resource summary reports through which U.S. Attorneys reported on the

number of full-time equivalent attorney positions and the amount of time

spent in various crime categories. Because we had concerns about the

accuracy of this information, both data sets should be viewed as general

indicators of caseload and workload. (See pp. 18 through 24.)

Organization and

Resources Focus on

Three Broad Crime

Areas

The predominance of drug, economic/white-collar, and violent crime

prosecutions in U.S. Attorneys’ caseloads and workloads is consistent with

the organizational structure and concentration of resources in the eight

U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited. All eight of the offices had units

dedicated to at least two of the three major crime areas. The eight offices

all had specialized units for drug prosecutions. They all also had units

dedicated to specific types of economic/white-collar crime, such as

1

Drug offenses include drug dealing, drug possession, and crimes prosecuted through the Organized

Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program.

2

Economic/White-collar crimes include official corruption; health-care fraud; environmental, health,

and safety crimes; financial institution fraud; and other frauds, such as telemarketing, computer,

securities, and bankruptcy.

3

Violent crimes include firearms violations, bank robbery, and other violent crimes.

Page 38 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

financial institution fraud, business/securities fraud, or public corruption.

Within the violent crime program area, one of the offices had a specialized

violent criminal enterprises unit. Two other offices conducted violent

crime prosecutions under a narcotics and violent crime unit. The other

five districts prosecuted violent crimes through nonspecialized units, such

as a general crimes unit.

Similarly, the resources attached to these units accounted for a substantial

portion, and in some cases, a majority of the resources of the offices’

criminal divisions. In seven districts for which data were available,

51 percent of the criminal division prosecutors were assigned to units

dedicated to drug, economic/white-collar, and violent crimes. In four of

those seven districts, more than half of the prosecutors were assigned to

those three crime areas.

Most Cases Filed in

Court by U.S.

Attorneys Involved

Drug,

Economic/WhiteCollar, and Violent

Crimes

As shown in Figure II.1, nationwide about 28.5 percent of all cases filed

involved drug crimes, about 28.8 percent involved economic/white-collar

crimes, and about 15.6 percent involved violent crimes. The remaining

27.1 percent of cases filed involved other types of prosecutions, including

organized crime, immigration, and a wide range of other federal criminal

violations.

Page 39 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.1: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed Nationwide

(Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

29%

Violent crime

16%

Other

27%

Drug

29%

Note 1: Total criminal cases filed equaled 36,995.

Note 2: Numbers do not add to 100 percent due to rounding.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

In each of the eight districts we visited, the combined total of drug,

economic/white-collar, and violent crime cases filed accounted for the

vast majority of cases filed by the district—from 65.8 percent in the

Southern District of New York to 81.3 percent in the District of Maine.

However, the percentage of case filings for each of the three crime areas

varied widely among the eight districts. Figures II.2 through II.9 show the

respective percentages of drug, economic/white-collar, violent crime

cases, and other crimes filed in federal district court for each of the U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices we visited.

Page 40 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.2: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the Central

District of California (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

28%

25%

Other

34%

Drug

13%

Violent crime

Note: Total criminal cases filed equaled 1,271.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 41 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.3: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the Southern

District of Florida (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

24%

Other

20%

Violent crime

9%

Drug

47%

Note: Total criminal cases filed equaled 1,100.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 42 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.4: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the District of

Maine (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

24%

Violent crime

19%

Other

19%

Drug

38%

Note: Total criminal cases filed equaled 112.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 43 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.5: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the District of

Maryland (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

36%

Violent crime

23%

Other

23%

Drug

18%

Note: Total criminal cases filed equaled 458.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 44 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.6: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the Western

District of Michigan (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

39%

Drug

26%

Violent crime

6%

Other

29%

Note: Total criminal cases filed equaled 241.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 45 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II. 7: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the Eastern

District of New York (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

22%

Violent crime

5%

Other

23%

Drug

49%

Note 1: Total criminal cases filed equaled 1,380.

Note 2: Numbers do not add to 100 percent due to rounding.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 46 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.8: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the Southern

District of New York (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

39%

Violent crime

9%

Other

34%

Drug

18%

Note: Total criminal cases filed equaled 1,263.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 47 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.9: Type and Percent of Total

Criminal Cases Filed in the Northern

District of Texas (Fiscal Year 1993) Economic/White-collar

34%

Violent crime

14%

Other

35%

Drug

18%

Note 1: Total criminal cases filed equaled 867.

Note 2: Numbers do not add to 100 percent due to rounding.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

The percentage of drug cases filed ranged from 49.2 percent in the Eastern

District of New York to 13.1 percent in the Central District of California.

The percentage of economic/white-collar cases filed ranged from

39.4 percent in the Western District of Michigan and the Southern District

of New York to 22.2 percent in the Eastern District of New York. Violent

crime cases filed ranged from 25.3 percent of all cases filed in the Central

District of California to 5.2 percent of the cases filed in the Eastern District

of New York.

Figures II.10 through II.13 compare the percentages of cases filed in the

three largest program areas and in all other program areas combined for

Page 48 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

each of the districts we visited to the percentages of these cases filed

nationally. The figures provide another illustration of the differences in the

types of criminal cases filed by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited.

Figure II.10: Percent of Drug Cases

Filed Nationally and in U.S. Attorneys’

Offices We Visited (Fiscal Year 1993)

13

47

38

18

26

49

18 18

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Percent of cases

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (29 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 49 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.11: Percent of

Economic/White-Collar Cases Filed

Nationally and in U.S. Attorneys’

Offices We Visited (Fiscal Year 1993)

28

24 24

36

39

22

39

34

0

10

20

30

40

50

Percent of cases

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (29 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 50 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.12: Percent of Violent Crime

Cases Filed Nationally and in U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices We Visited (Fiscal

Year 1993)

25

9

19

23

6

5

9

14

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Percent of cases

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (16 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 51 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.13: Percent of All Other Crime

Cases Filed Nationally and in the U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices We Visited (Fiscal

Year 1993)

34

20

19

23

29

23

34

35

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (27 percent)

Percent of cases

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Most Attorney Time

Was Spent on Drug,

Economic/WhiteCollar, and Violent

Crime Cases

As shown in Figure II.14, in fiscal year 1993, nationwide about 32 percent

of criminal prosecutors’ time was spent on drug cases, about 32 percent

was spent on economic/white-collar cases, and about 11 percent was spent

on violent crime cases. The remaining 25 percent of the criminal

prosecutors’ time was spent on other types of cases, including organized

crime, immigration, criminal forfeitures and appeals, and other criminal

violations.

Page 52 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.14: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions Nationwide (Fiscal Year

1993)

Economic/White-collar

32%

Violent crime

11%

Other

25%

Drug

32%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 2,832.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Criminal prosecutors in the eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited spent

most of their time working in the three large program areas—drug,

economic/white-collar, and violent crimes. In each of these offices, the

combined total time devoted by prosecutors to these three program areas

accounted for a substantial majority of the office’s total prosecutive

time—from 61 percent in the Eastern District of New York to 82 percent in

the District of Maryland.

Figures II.15 through II.22 show the number of attorney positions devoted

to the three broad priority program areas and to all other criminal cases,

nationwide and for each of the eight districts we visited.

Page 53 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.15: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the Central District of

California (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

37%

Drug

26%

Violent crime

12%

Other

24%

Note 1: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 138.

Note 2: Numbers do not add to 100 percent due to rounding.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 54 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.16: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the Southern District of

Florida (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

28%

Violent crime

4%

Other

31%

Drug

37%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 147.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 55 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.17: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the District of Maine

(Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

32%

Drug

36%

Violent crime

5%

Other

27%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 14.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 56 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.18: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the District of Maryland

(Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

35%

Drug

37%

Other

18%

Violent crime

11%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 45.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 57 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.19: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the Western District of

Michigan (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

32%

Violent crime

11%

Other

27%

Drug

30%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 19.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 58 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.20: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the Eastern District of

New York (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

25%

Violent crime

4%

Other

39%

Drug

32%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 96.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 59 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.21: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the Southern District of

New York (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

43%

Drug

28%

Violent crime

4%

Other

25%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 123.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 60 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.22: Percent and Type of

Full-Time Equivalent Criminal Attorney

Positions in the Northern District of

Texas (Fiscal Year 1993)

Economic/White-collar

48%

Drug

26%

Other

20%

Violent crime

6%

Note: Total criminal attorney positions equaled 51.

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

While the largest amount of attorney time in all of the districts was spent

in the three large program areas combined, time devoted to each area

varied among districts, particularly for drug and economic/white-collar

crime prosecutions. For example, the amount of attorney time spent on

drug cases ranged from the equivalent of 26 percent of attorney positions

in the Central District of California and the Northern District of Texas to

37 percent in the Southern District of Florida and the District of Maryland.

Attorney time spent on economic/white-collar crimes ranged from the

equivalent of 25 percent of attorney positions in the Eastern District of

New York to 48 percent in the Northern District of Texas. The amount of

Page 61 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

attorney time spent on violent crime ranged from the equivalent of

4 percent of attorney positions in the Southern District of Florida and the

Eastern and Southern Districts of New York to 12 percent of attorney

positions in the Central District of California.

Figures II.23 through II.26 compare the percent of attorney time spent in

the three largest program areas in each of the districts to the percent of

attorney time spent nationally. The figures show the differences in how

criminal attorney time was spent by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices we visited.

Figure II.23: Percent of Full-Time

Equivalent Criminal Attorney Positions

Spent on Drug Cases (Fiscal Year

1993)

26

37

36

37

30

32

28

26

0

10

20

30

40

Percent of positions

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (32 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 62 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.24: Percent of Full-Time

Equivalent Criminal Attorney Positions

Spent on Economic/White-Collar

Cases (Fiscal Year 1993)

37

28

32

35

32

25

43

48

0

10

20

30

40

50

Percent of positions

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (32 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 63 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.25: Percent of Full-Time

Equivalent Criminal Attorney Positions

Spent on Violent Crime Cases (Fiscal

Year 1993)

12

4

5

11 11

4 4

6

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Percent of positions

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (11 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 64 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix II 

Analysis of EOUSA Statistics on Criminal

Caseloads and Workloads Nationwide and

for Eight U.S. Attorneys’ Offices

Figure II.26: Percent of Full-Time

Equivalent Criminal Attorney Positions

Spent on Other Crime Cases (Fiscal

Year 1993)

24

31

27

18

27

39

25

20

0

10

20

30

40

50

Percent of positions

California

(central) Florida

(southern)

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

(western)

New York

(eastern)

New York

(southern)

Texas

(northern)

= National average (25 percent)

Source: GAO analysis of EOUSA data.

Page 65 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in the

report text appear at the

end of this appendix.

Page 66 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

See comment 1.

See comment 2.

See comment 3.

Page 67 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

See comment 4.

Page 68 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

Now on p. 23.

See comment 5.

Now on p. 22.

Page 69 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

Now on p. 23.

Page 70 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

Page 71 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix III 

Comments From the Department of Justice

The following are GAO’s comments on the Department of Justice’s letter

dated April 13, 1995.

GAO Comments 1. While we discussed the role of the Attorney General’s Advisory

Committee of U.S. Attorneys as a forum for U.S. Attorneys to have input

into setting national prosecutive priorities, we did not explore the

involvement of this group in coordinating priorities among Justice

components because we focused on coordination among law enforcement

agencies at the level of individual U.S. Attorney districts.

2. We noted that priorities were communicated to U.S. Attorneys through a

variety of forums, including most of those EOUSA cited. Among the forums

we cited as examples were Attorney General and Justice directives,

training sessions, seminars, and conferences. (See p. 8.)

3. We recognized that Law Enforcement Coordination Committees (LECC)

were important forums of inter-district communication in several of the

U.S. Attorney districts we visited. We referred to LECCs broadly as law

enforcement meetings when citing them as forums for U.S. Attorneys to

communicate priorities to federal, state, and local investigative agency

personnel. (See p. 14.)

4. We agree that we had no means of assessing whether evaluators

reviewed how U.S. Attorneys addressed national priorities but then did not

mention their findings in their written reports. We reviewed final

evaluation reports, but we were not provided with evaluators’ working

papers and notes.

5. While we devoted some attention to efforts by EOUSA to improve the

accuracy of its case management data, including discussion of actions

taken in various phases of its “Operation Garbage Out” program, we did

not note specifically that EOUSA sent U.S. Attorneys error listings on a

periodic basis.

Page 72 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
Appendix IV 

Major Contributors to This Report

General Government

Division, Washington,

D.C.

Deborah A. Knorr, Senior Evaluator

Wendy C. Graves, Evaluator

Janice Turner, Evaluator

Barry J. Seltser, Assistant Director

David P. Alexander, Senior Social Science Analyst

Office of the General

Counsel, Washington,

D.C.

Henry R. Wray, Senior Associate General Counsel

Ann H. Finley, Senior Attorney

Boston/New York

Field Office

Michael Savino, Senior Evaluator

Brenda R. James-Towe, Senior Evaluator

Atlanta Field Office Clarence Tull, Senior Evaluator

Chicago/Detroit Field

Office

Jerry Aiello, Senior Evaluator

Dallas Field Office Phillip Caramia, Senior Evaluator

Los Angeles Field

Office

Richard R. Griswold, Senior Evaluator

(181973) Page 73 GAO/GGD-95-150 Implementing Priority Programs
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