Federal fishery law enforcers, whose hard line and heavy fines for boats and businesses with technical reporting violations have driven fishermen into deep debt or out of the business, has itself been working in a data fog that has hindered fairness and effectiveness, a Department of Commerce report shows.
The willingness of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to flail without information considered essential to a professional law enforcement system is singled out for explicit criticism by the U.S. Commerce Department's Inspector General in the report, issued last week.
"It seems to us," the investigation report stated, "that with an asset forfeiture fund with a balance of $8.4 million, NOAA has more than sufficient resources to develop and implement the data systems necessary to keep track of the performance of its enforcement group."
In the absence of useful data, the IG impelled research revealing troubling anomalies.
For example, fines in the Northeast region — cited repeatedly as the most extreme example of law enforcement operating outside higher supervision — were 250 percent greater than in the next highest region, and 500 percent more than in any of the other four regions.