Transactional Records Access Clearinghous: “Despite tough talk on cracking down on crime from the President and from Attorney General Sessions, actual criminal prosecutions and convictions secured by federal prosecutors have dropped. The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during the first ten months of FY 2017 federal criminal convictions were down 12.3 percent over the past fiscal year. Compared to five years ago, federal convictions were down 31.3 percent. And new filings of federal criminal prosecutions are similarly down. Immigration offenses accounted for 53.1 percent of all federal convictions so far in FY 2017. The second largest number were for federal violations of narcotic and drug laws (18.6%). Declines in criminal prosecutions in both these areas contributed to the overall decline in total federal convictions this year. The pace of immigration convictions during the first ten months of FY 2017 was down 17.1 percent, while those for drug crimes have declined by 4.0 percent. Nationally, this year’s federal drug convictions have fallen to their lowest recorded level since FY 1997. The five districts along the southwest border with Mexico occupied the top five out of six spots as the most active districts in the country. This reflected the fact that immigration prosecutions – chiefly for illegal entry and re-entry – were such a dominant component of all federal prosecutions. Relative to population size, the federal judicial district in Wyoming was the fifth most active in the country. It had five times the number of federal criminal convictions relative to its population size than the national average. The other top ranked districts based on per capita convictions were: South Dakota (ranked seventh), North Dakota (ranked eighth), Montana (ranked ninth), and Vermont (ranked tenth).”