Justice stops counting detainees

[Chris Kromm]

AMY GOLDSTEIN & DAN EGGEN, WASHINGTON POST: The Justice Department announced
it will no longer issue a running tally of the number of people detained
around the country as law enforcement officials investigate the Sept. 11
hijackings and try to prevent further terrorist attacks. An official said
the department will instead provide two, smaller pieces of information about
its campaign of detentions -- identifying how many people are being held on
charges of violating immigration laws and how many are in federal custody.
The revised information policy will narrow the picture of the detentions in
two ways. It will omit what federal officials have described as the largest
group of detainees: people who have been apprehended by FBI agents or police
on unrelated state or local criminal charges, some of them minor. In
addition, the figures will reflect only the number of people held on INS or
federal charges at any given time -- not the cumulative total who have been
arrested and, in an unknown number of cases, released.