At NAFUSA’s annual conference in Atlanta in October, H. Marshall Jarrett, the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, gave the State of the Department address. Jarrett told the conference that civil cases were up  10% in fiscal year 2012 but criminal cases were down 8.4% from the all time high in 2011. He said it was not a surprise as staffing was down 850 employees and constituted a return to 2008 levels. A hiring freeze remains in effect, with federal pay raises frozen for the past two years.

Jarrett mentioned a bright note in that collections are expected to be $13 billion in fiscal year 2012 compared to the Department’s appropriated budget of just under $2 billion for the year.