It sounds altruistic enough. To the tune of $30 million annually since 2001, the Justice Department's Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative has reimbursed state and local authorities along the U.S.-Mexico border to prosecute criminal cases that U.S. attorneys' offices have declined.
But an audit released today by the department's Office of Inspector General — the internal watchdog on waste, fraud, and abuse — questioned $15.7 million of $55.1 million audited in reimbursements to seven border jurisdictions from 2001 to 2006.
The review also found that the department's Office of Justice Programs — which administers the program — does not require applicants to provide documentation supporting reimbursement requests, does not review the applications for accuracy, and does not monitor recipients to determine the eligibility of cases submitted for reimbursement.
In addition, OIG auditors also discovered that none of the seven jurisdictions kept records to support the costs submitted for reimbursement. "In our audit, this resulted in reimbursements totaling $49.78 million that could not be linked to actual costs incurred by the jurisdictions to prosecute federally declined [and] referred criminal cases," a statement said.
Morever, in six of the seven entities analyzed, auditors said administrators did not certify that they had used only the Border Prosecution Initiative funds to cover their costs, raising the possibility that they used other federal reimbursement programs. "This could result in jurisdictions being reimbursed by the federal government more than once for the same prosecutions and pre-trial detention services," the OIG said.
The entities audited include the New Mexico Department of Public Safety; Yuma County and Maricopa County in Arizona; Brooks County and El Paso County in Texas; the San Diego district attorney’s office; and the City-County government of San Francisco.
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