Chicago and other big cities have seen the number of new federal prosecutions drop steadily, likely because of a hangover from the partial shutdown of the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data provided by a Syracuse University research group. In the year ending Sept. 30, Chicago is expected to have a more than 37% decrease in prosecutions of cases from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives compared with last fiscal year. A 45% drop in prosecutions of cases from the Drug Enforcement Administration is expected along with an 8% fall in prosecutions of cases investigated by the FBI, says Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which obtains federal court data through the Freedom of Information Act. It's unclear if the slowdown has affected crime in Chicago. As new federal prosecutions have fallen here since the start of the pandemic, reports of crime surged but are now ebbing somewhat, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
Through June 16, reported crime in the city was down 11% compared with the same period in 2023, and the number of killings was down 15%, but there was a rise in reported burglaries, robberies and aggravated battery, according to the Chicago Police Department. The annual number of arrests by Chicago cops has trended upward since the pandemic. Starting in early 2020, new federal prosecutions began to drop in the Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, as well as in the Eastern District of New York, which includes Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, and in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles.
“We do know that the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting partial shutdown of the federal government beginning in March 2020 disrupted federal investigations and prosecution activity, significantly impacting enforcement activities by the Drug Enforcement Administration,” TRAC said. TRAC anticipates New York will continue to see decreases in federal prosecutions of ATF and DEA cases this fiscal year, but FBI cases will rise.