This bill mandates a comprehensive public accounting and index of all federal criminal statutory and regulatory offenses, including prosecution data and mental state requirements.
Chip Roy
Representative
TX-21
The Count the Crimes to Cut Act mandates a comprehensive review and public indexing of all federal criminal offenses, both statutory and regulatory. It requires the Attorney General and various federal agencies to report on the elements, penalties, and enforcement history of these crimes. This legislation aims to increase transparency by creating publicly accessible indexes of all federal criminal offenses within two years of enactment.
New Act Mandates Public Index of Every Federal Crime, Including 15 Years of Prosecution Data
The “Count the Crimes to Cut Act” is a massive transparency effort aimed at cataloging every single federal crime on the books—and there are thousands. This bill requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the heads of numerous federal agencies, like the EPA, Department of Labor, and the SEC, to produce comprehensive reports within one year and public online indexes within two years detailing every criminal offense they enforce.
The Great Inventory: Cataloging All Federal Offenses
This isn’t just about the crimes you hear about on TV. The bill focuses on two categories: criminal statutory offenses (crimes defined in federal law, like bank robbery) and criminal regulatory offenses (rules created by agencies that carry a criminal penalty if broken). Think of a small business owner who accidentally violates a niche EPA rule or a contractor who misses a specific OSHA filing requirement—these are often the regulatory offenses that catch people unaware. For every single offense, the reports must list the elements of the crime, the potential penalty, and critically, the mens rea—the mental state required to be guilty (e.g., did you have to know you were breaking the law, or was it enough to just do the action?).
15 Years of Data for Every Offense
Here’s where it gets intense. For each listed crime, the Attorney General and agency heads must report the number of prosecutions brought each year for the 15 years preceding the law’s enactment. This means the DOJ and dozens of agencies—from the Department of Education to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—have to sift through a decade and a half of records to track how often they actually use their criminal enforcement power. This historical data is gold for legal scholars and anyone arguing for criminal justice reform, as it shows which laws are actively enforced versus those just gathering dust.
What This Means for Agencies and Taxpayers
For the average person, this bill promises unprecedented clarity. If you’re a compliance officer at a mid-sized firm or a lawyer trying to advise a client, having a single, searchable public index of every federal crime—complete with the required mens rea—is a huge win for legal certainty. However, the bill explicitly states that it doesn’t authorize new funding for this massive undertaking. This means the DOJ and the 30+ named agencies must pull staff and resources from their existing budgets to complete this census of crime.
This administrative burden is significant. Compiling 15 years of prosecution data for potentially thousands of obscure regulatory offenses is a monumental task. The risk here is that agencies, stretched thin and without dedicated funding, might rush the job or provide incomplete data just to meet the one-year deadline. While the goal of transparency is laudable, the implementation challenge—doing a massive, detailed inventory without a dedicated budget—could lead to delays or, worse, an inaccurate index that doesn't actually clarify the law for the people who need it most.