The US Justice Department has sharply increased prosecution of terrorism-related cases since the September 11 attacks but many fizzled and few produced significant prison time, a new study finds.
About 6,400 people were referred by investigators for criminal charges involving terror in the two years after the attacks, but fewer than one-third were actually charged and only 879 were convicted, according to government records reviewed by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The median prison sentence was just 14 days, according to the study by clearinghouse co-directors David Burnham and Susan P. Long, which was released on Sunday. Only five people were sentenced to 20 years or more.
Critics seized on the numbers to question whether Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top law-enforcement officials have been overstating the success of their anti-terrorism efforts.
Nearly every time Ashcroft talks about the subject, he reads a long list of statistics on arrests and convictions to buttress his contention that great progress is being made.
Senator Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee with oversight of the FBI and Justice Department, said the report "raises questions about the accuracy of the department's claims about terrorism enforcement."
"This report shows that despite the focus on terrorism-related crimes, most of the people accused of terrorism involvement are getting little jail time, if at all," said Grassley.
Justice Department and FBI officials said the study is rooted in past conceptions of crime and punishment and does not reflect the reality that would-be terrorists seek to blend into society until they are ready to strike.
Lack of lengthy prison terms in many cases can be explained by the effort by prosecutors to stop would-be terrorists long before they are ready to attack, often charging them with lesser offenses, such as identity theft, document fraud and immigration violations.
Prosecutors feel it is better to get suspects off the streets and press them for information than wait for events that could produce harsher penalties.
They also said the study makes no mention of the value of intelligence collection and the need to reward cooperation with lesser sentences.
"The whole point is to disrupt terrorism at an early stage instead of letting the conspiracy fully hatch," said Viet Dinh, a former top Justice Department official under Attorney General John Ashcroft who now teaches law at Georgetown University.
"We cannot take the risk of the conspiracy taking place. What you get is shorter sentences but greater prevention," he said.
In other words, for every would-be "shoe bomber" such as Richard Reid -- serving a life sentence for trying to light an explosive on a Paris-to-Miami flight last year -- there are many more suspects such as the group of Yemeni-Americans from Lackawanna, New York, who were convicted of supporting terrorism by briefly attending al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
"This administration's strategy of preventing terrorism has helped protect Americans for over two years," Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said.
According to the study, about 874 cases were pending as of Sept. 30, including some that might produce longer sentences.
In October, for example, two members of an Oregon group were sentenced to 18 years each in prison for attempting to travel to Afghanistan and fight US forces there.
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