Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) - fictional sting operations

Between 2011 and 2014, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), part of the Department of Justice, engaged in a campaign of fabricated sting operations in which individuals were enticed to participate in gun and drug related crimes against entirely fictitious stash house targets for which they were then arrested and convicted. The "made up" crimes were in fact entirely the creation of ATF, and as described by two Federal judges, carried severe sentences (typically 15 years) but were likely to cause grave unfairness and miscarriage of justice.

A U.S.A. Today investigation in 2013 showed that over 1000 individuals have been incarcerated for lengthy periods since 2011 for such "fake" crimes, and that the strategy has become a "key part" of the Bureau's strategy. ATF officials stated that the strategy pre-emptively targeted people likely to commit serious crime rather than waiting for them to do so; opponents and critics, and later, judges, expressed concerns that it was tantamount to entrapment and punishing people for thoughts and possibilities rather than actual criminal acts, by presenting them with deliberately hard to resist fabricated inducements and goading them to become a participant, or to engage in more extreme criminal activities, up to an extent chosen almost completely by ATF.

In 2013 Illinois Chief Federal Judge Ruben Castillo expressed significant concerns over one such case (Brown et al). In 2014 California judge Otis Wright went further and dismissed another such case (Hudson) as "outrageous" government conduct and "unconstitutional", stating that it had neither prevented nor detected crime, but cost the taxpayer dearly, and that the overwhelming extent of ATF direction of the purported crime, and the level of ATF involvement, made the ATF operative more of a participant rather than an observer, the sentence a reflection of ATF whim rather than defendant's own conduct, and the case into one that lacked due process.

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