Most of the terrorism statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice are inaccurate, with prosecutors routinely counting as terrorism cases those with no known links to terrorism, according to an inspector general’s report.

“The collection and reporting of terrorism-related statistics within the department is decentralized and haphazard,” according to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine’s report (PDF).

The report found that out of 26 sets of statistics kept by the department, only two were accurate, with the remainder either understated or grossly overstated.

“The number of terrorism-related convictions was overstated because the FBI initially coded the investigative cases as terrorism-related when the cases were opened, but did not recode cases when no link to terrorism was established,” the report said.

The biggest problems were in numbers compiled by the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, which counted hundreds of terrorism cases that did not qualify for the designation because they involved minor crimes with no connection to terrorist activity, the report said. . . .

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said “the notion that the Justice Department inflated its statistics is false and flatly contradicted by the [inspector general's] report itself, which found that the Criminal Division either accurately stated or understated the department’s terrorism statistics in nearly all categories.”

Fine’s report was careful to stress that the inaccuracies did not appear to have been intentional but instead were the result of shoddy recordkeeping, disagreements over definitions and other problems. — Washington Post

Unfortunately, the inspector general didn’t examine the statistics that closely, to see whether cases reported as terrorism related really were terrorism related, just whether they were reported as such, though the report acknowledged the existence of such cases.

“We found many cases involving offenses such as immigration violations, marriage fraud, or drug trafficking where Department officials provided no evidence to link the subject of the case to terrorist activity,” the report said.

In 2005, we reported that DOJ was fudging the numbers in terrorism cases. In one egregious case, DOJ reclassified an open case of stolen breakfast cereal as a terrorism case right after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Because stealing Corn Flakes is clearly a terrorist act.

In any case, it’s what we’ve come to expect from government.