Justice Blogs

This Fourth of July marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which as President Obama declared, "is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government." In July 2015, OIP launched a pilot program with the participation of seven agency volunteers to assess the feasibility of a policy that would entail not only releasing FOIA processed records to one requester, but to the public at large by having the agency  post them online. Today, and in celebration of the FOIA’s 50th anniversary, OIP is pleased to release its report on this pilot along with its analysis and next steps.

In his 2009 FOIA Memorandum, President Obama directed agencies to take affirmative steps to make information available to the public. Likewise, the Department of Justice in its 2009 FOIA Guidelines stressed the importance of proactive disclosures and has encouraged agencies to engage in an ongoing effort to identify records of interest to the public and to post them online. The pilot sought to answer many important questions on the feasibility of a “release to one/release to all” policy, including the:

• costs associated with such a policy,
• effect on staff time for those who process requests,
• effect on interactions with government stakeholders, and the
• justification for any exceptions to such a policy, such as for personal privacy.

The agencies that participated in the pilot are the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and components or offices of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, and the National Archives and Records Administration. Throughout the pilot, OIP collected metrics, provided guidance, and answered questions from the participating agencies and solicited feedback from the public. All of the information collected from agencies and received from the public has been incorporated into the assessment.

Analyzing the pilot results revealed that a broad implementation of the “release to one/release to all” policy will require the active participation of a range of offices within each agency. Not only will FOIA offices need to be engaged in this process but, more significantly, the Web teams or IT offices who provide the technical assistance in preparing documents for posting will need to develop workflows and plans to accommodate the increased volume of postings that would occur as a result of implementation. Additionally, time and financial resources may need to be reallocated. Given these factors, the engagement of agency Chief FOIA Officers is critical to expanding the “release to one/release to all” policy more broadly across the government.

As a result of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, Chief FOIA Officers will serve on a newly-created Chief FOIA Officers Council. The Department of Justice will present the results of its "release to one/release to all" pilot as the first item for the new Council to consider and will seek the assistance of the Council in determining the best way forward. 

Alongside these efforts, OIP will continue to engage with agencies on the implementation of this policy. OIP will also continue to ask agencies to include in their Chief FOIA Officer Reports details about their efforts regarding proactive disclosures in general and “release to one/release to all” efforts in particular. All agencies are encouraged to use the results of this pilot as a guide while the Chief FOIA Officers Council begins its work, and we encourage everyone to review OIP’s full report on this pilot.

Courtesy of Principal Deputy Director Bea Hanson of the Office on Violence Against Women

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) was thrilled to participate in the United State of Women Summit on June 14, 2016. Over 5,000 people traveled to Washington, D.C., from all across the country and around the world; many thousands more attended via livestream, which you can watch on the Summit’s website. The White House Council on Women and Girls coordinated the event to both celebrate the progress that’s been made over the past seven and a half years and to galvanize action for the work that still lies ahead.

“Together we are all stronger” was a theme woven throughout the Summit, which was built on six pillars: violence against women and girls; health and wellness; economic empowerment; entrepreneurship and innovation; educational opportunity; and leadership and civic engagement.

President Obama addressed the Summit and expressed his optimism that tomorrow’s leaders will encourage a society that treats women with respect: “…So our girls see that they, too, are America -- confident and courageous and, in the words of Audre Lord, ‘deliberate and afraid of nothing.’”

During the Summit, various breakouts, referred to as “Solutions Seminars,” focused on violence against women issues. I had an opportunity to moderate one of these breakouts, entitled “From the Margins to the Center: Solutions to Stopping Violence in All Communities,” which was livestreamed nationally and can be viewed on the Watch the Summit (at 4:15:17). We had a very powerful discussion with courageous women who highlighted the increasing need for interventions addressing domestic and sexual violence to be led by and for diverse communities. Our panel discussed how this could be done through culturally based and innovative approaches that build on the strengths and resilience of their communities. The insights and activism of all the participants also demonstrated how our collective national response to gender violence can better address violence against all women and girls.

In preparation for the Summit, the White House Council on Women and Girls compiled a factsheet highlighting many significant accomplishments during the past seven and a half years, across many different federal agencies, to advance the Administration’s goal of ending violence against women and girls. This document is truly a testament to the tremendous hard work and dedication of advocates and stakeholders. And yet, as we all know, there is still so much more work to be done.

As part of the Summit, OVW, the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Family Violence Prevention and Services Program (FVPSA) cohosted a performance of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) play “Sliver of a Full Moon,” which is a powerful reenactment of the historic congressional reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013.  The play also highlights the efforts of tribal advocates and leaders from across the country to restore the authority of tribal governments to prosecute non-Native abusers who assault and abuse Native women on tribal lands. The performance was presented in partnership with the National Congress of American Indians and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.

OVW, OVC, and FVPSA also cohosted a post-Summit event at George Washington University entitled “Reimagining, Reinvigorating and Moving Forward to End Sexual Assault, Domestic violence, Dating Violence and Stalking.” Leaders from national, state, tribal, and local domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking organizations facilitated discussions for more than 400 participants on promising practices, innovative approaches, and the needs of survivors in marginalized and underserved communities. Topics included improving the criminal justice response to violence against women, as well as exploring alternative pathways to safety and healing, enhancing the role of health care providers in prevention and intervention efforts, improving access to shelter and housing, economic justice, tribal sovereignty, youth and children in the civil courts, youth leadership, and technology. This event also featured a “White House Arm Chair Discussion” with both the current and former White House Advisor on Violence Against Women, and we look forward to sharing a summary report of this convening in the months ahead.

OVW also released some new reports and funding announcements in conjunction with the Summit, including the following:

1. “Twenty Years of the Violence Against Women Act: Dispatches from the Field.” This report summarizes the themes from the national tour of OVW grant recipients in which OVW staff visited 50 locations in 20 states—rural, urban, suburban, and tribal – and conducted listening sessions. The report summarizes those conversations, highlighting accomplishments and the lasting influence of VAWA on communities’ ability to respond to sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking, as well as identifying barriers and gaps in services.

2. Awards to Reduce Domestic Violence Homicides. OVW announced new investments of more than $3.2 million to reduce domestic violence homicides due to firearms. The awards will be used for enhanced training and technical assistance, demonstration programs, and the establishment of a National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and Firearms.

3. Demonstration Programs to Provide Stable Housing to Victims of Domestic Violence Living with HIV/AIDS. OVW and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office on HIV-AIDS Housing announced grant awards of more than $9 million to support eight local programs across the country to provide housing assistance and supportive services to low-income persons living with HIV/AIDS who are victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, or stalking.

4. Additionally, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) National Girls Initiative published a report, “Unintended Consequence: Addressing the Impact of Domestic Violence Mandatory and Pro-Arrest Policies and Practices on Girls and Young Women.” This report was based on a roundtable that OJJDP and OVW had convened earlier this year, in conjunction with the National Girls Initiative, in which they brought together a group of advocates representing the violence against women and the juvenile justice reform for girls communities to discuss the unintended consequences of domestic violence mandatory and pro-arrest policies on girls and young women, as well as the disproportionate impact on communities of color.

As First Lady Michele Obama noted during the Summit, “the work always continues.  And by that I mean we’re never done.” But, we know that, together, we are all stronger and have the ability to make incredible and long-lasting change to bring safety and justice to all women and girls. 

Join the United State of Women and pledge to do your part so that today we can all change tomorrow. Here is the pledge:

I WILL:

Be in charge of my own body. Every powerful part.

Learn whatever I want like it's nobody's business.

Stand by my game-changing ideas.

Use my voice to stand up for my community.

Get paid the same as everyone else doing the same job.

Call out sexism when I see it.

Not be a silent bystander.

Blog post courtesy of Acting Associate Attorney General William J. Baer

Many consumers received some good news yesterday when e-book retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble reached out to notify them of significant credits being added to their accounts.  The source of these credits was a payment by Apple Inc. of $400 million to reimburse e-book purchasers for the higher prices they paid for e-books during the time in which a price-fixing conspiracy between Apple and five e-book publishers was in force.  Purchasers of New York Times bestsellers are being provided a $6.93 credit for each title they bought.  Purchasers of other titles are receiving $1.57 for each e-book.  Consumers can apply these credits to future purchases.

Apple’s obligation to make these payments arose from conduct that the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division challenged in a civil antitrust lawsuit it filed in April 2012.  The Antitrust Division alleged, and ultimately proved at trial, that Apple knowingly orchestrated a price-fixing conspiracy among five large book publishers that led to substantial increases in the prices readers were required to pay for e-books.  As Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found:

The Plaintiffs have shown through compelling evidence that Apple violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by conspiring with the Publisher Defendants to eliminate retail price competition and to raise e-book prices.  There is overwhelming evidence that the Publisher Defendants joined with each other in a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy.  Through that conspiracy, the Publisher Defendants raised the prices of many of their New Releases and NYT Bestsellers above the $9.99 price at which they had previously been sold through Amazon.  They also raised the prices of many of their backlist e-books.  The Plaintiffs have also shown that Apple was a knowing and active member of that conspiracy.  Apple not only willingly joined the conspiracy, but also forcefully facilitated it.

United States v. Apple, Inc., 952 F. Supp. 2d 638, 691 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed Judge Cote’s decision a year ago.  United States v. Apple., Inc., 791 F.3d 290 (2d Cir. 2015).

On March 7, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Apple’s petition for certiorari and made final the lower court decisions in the case.  The Supreme Court’s action triggered Apple’s obligation to pay $400 million to e-book purchasers under Apple’s July 2014 agreement to settle damages actions brought by the attorneys general of 33 states and territories and a private class of e-book purchasers.  With the $166 million previously paid by the conspiring publishers to settle claims against them, Apple’s payment brings to $566 million the amount repaid to e-book purchasers overcharged as a result of Apple’s and the publishers’ illegal conspiracy.

The final judgment entered by Judge Cote also took steps to meet the court’s goal of “ensur[ing] that the government need never again expend its resources to bring Apple into court for violations of the country’s antitrust laws.”  In her final judgment, Judge Cote appointed an external compliance monitor to work with Apple to improve its antitrust compliance and training programs.  The monitor worked with Apple for two years, overcame efforts on Apple’s part to discredit him and impede his work and, in the end, ensured that Apple implemented significantly strengthened policies, procedures and training that we hope will prevent a recurrence of the activities that led to this case.  Apple will also face further compliance and reporting obligations for the judgment’s two remaining years.

The terrific outcome achieved in this case shows how our antitrust laws work to protect consumers against antitrust conspiracies and how the Antitrust Division will pursue antitrust enforcement actions where warranted against even the most powerful companies in the world.  The Antitrust Division and 33 state attorneys general worked together to expose the unlawful conduct, negotiate consent decrees with the book publishers, establish Apple’s liability at trial and defend that result on appeal.  The states and private plaintiffs used those outcomes to secure damages for the many consumers injured by the conspiracy.

Blog post courtesy of Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Criminal Division

Congress is currently considering proposed amendments to Rule 41, which are scheduled to take effect on Dec. 1, 2016.

This marks the end of a three-year deliberation process, which included extensive written comments and public testimony.  After hearing the public’s views, the federal judiciary’s Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which includes federal and state judges, law professors, attorneys in private practice and others in the legal community, rejected criticisms of the proposal as misinformed and approved the amendments.  The amendments were then considered and unanimously approved by the Standing Committee on Rules and the Judicial Conference, and adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The amendments do not change any of the traditional protections and procedures under the Fourth Amendment, such as the requirement that the government establish probable cause.  Rather, the amendments would merely ensure that at least one court is available to consider whether a particular warrant application comports with the Fourth Amendment.

The amendments would not authorize the government to undertake any search or seizure or use any remote search technique, whether inside or outside the United States, that is not already permitted under current law.  The use of remote searches is not new and warrants for remote searches are currently issued under Rule 41.  In addition, most courts already permit the search of multiple computers pursuant to a single warrant so long as necessary legal requirements are met.

The amendments would apply in two narrow circumstances:

First, where a suspect has hidden the location of his or her computer using technological means, the changes to Rule 41 would ensure that federal agents know which judge to go to in order to apply for a warrant.  For example, if agents are investigating criminals who are sexually exploiting children and uploading videos of that exploitation for others to see—but concealing their locations through anonymizing technology—agents will be able to apply for a search warrant to discover where they are located.  A recent investigation that utilized this type of search warrant identified dozens of children who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the offenders.  While some federal courts hearing cases arising from this investigation have upheld the warrant as lawful, others have ordered the suppression of evidence based solely on the lack of clear venue in the current version of the rule.

And second, where the crime involves criminals hacking computers located in five or more different judicial districts, the changes to Rule 41 would ensure that federal agents may identify one judge to review an application for a search warrant rather than be required to submit separate warrant applications in each district—up to 94—where a computer is affected.  For example, agents may seek a search warrant to assist in the investigation of a ransomware scheme facilitated by a botnet that enables criminals abroad to extort thousands of Americans.  Absent the amendments, the requirement to obtain up to 94 simultaneous search warrants may prevent investigators from taking needed action to liberate computers infected with malware.  This change would not permit indiscriminate surveillance of thousands of victim computers—that is against the law now and it would continue to be prohibited if the amendment goes into effect.

These changes would ensure a court-supervised framework through which law enforcement can successfully investigate and prosecute these instances of cybercrime.

Blog post courtesy of Acting Associate Attorney General Bill Baer

Today, at the invitation of Dr. Finley, the Chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), I had the honor of visiting the Flathead Indian Reservation with other federal officials, including U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter and other U.S. Attorneys who comprise the Attorney General's Advisory Subcommittee on Native American Issues.

As the group that advises the Attorney General on Native American issues, we discussed ways to strengthen the government-to-government relationship and recognized the positive impact that we have been making together.

The CSKT are but one of 567 federally recognized tribes with whom the United States shares a government-to-government relationship and a special trust responsibility.  The CSKT have made significant progress on a number of fronts, including an astounding stewardship of wildlife and natural resources, a tribal college we visited today with a remarkably diversity of students and degree programs, and an innovative approach to law enforcement that both strengthens and rehabilitates community.  This is a great example of how the department is working alongside tribes across the country to foster approaches that make communities safer and healthier.

Courtesy of Acting Associate Attorney General Bill Baer

Today I had the privilege of meeting with prosecutors from the Department of Justice, agents from the FBI and IRS, and enforcers from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Inspector General, the Federal Reserve, the state of New York and the United Kingdom, all of whom are committed to ensuring the integrity of financial markets.  The meeting, hosted by the Antitrust Division’s New York Office, provided a forum for this dedicated group of public servants to talk about how we can continue to work together to achieve our shared goal.

Customers and businesses around the world rely on financial institutions to deal with them fairly, act as honest brokers and be good stewards of their investments.  When these institutions don’t live up to those legitimate expectations—when they are reckless or engage in theft, fraud or collusion—recent painful experience shows the damage they can cause to individual consumers and our entire economy.  The department, along with other enforcers in the United States and elsewhere, takes seriously our responsibility to hold institutions and their executives accountable for bad behavior and to deter such conduct from happening again.

Cooperation and collaboration are vital to our success.  When we work together with our law enforcement partners, we are better able to tackle complicated and problematic behaviors, minimize duplication and accelerate favorable outcomes, and enhance and strengthen the impact of each agency’s efforts.  Close coordination benefits the subjects of the investigation, too, by minimizing repetitive requests for information and conflicting demands.

We discussed recent examples of successful joint efforts.  There are many.  Over the past several years, the Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) Working Group brought together the department, including U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and other federal and state enforcers, to investigate fraud and misconduct in the sales of RMBS in the lead up to the financial crisis—securities that resulted in billions of dollars of losses for investors along with sweeping harm to homeowners and the broader economy.  Thus far, these efforts have resulted in over $42 billion in penalties, compensation and other relief, including billions of dollars paid or credited back to struggling homeowners. 

The department has also worked with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and attorneys general from 49 states and the District of Columbia in reaching unprecedented settlements with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers for “robo-signing” and other abusive mortgage servicing practices.  These include the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement, a landmark $25 billion settlement with the five largest mortgage servicers; a 2014 settlement with SunTrust for $968 million; and, in February of this year, a $470 million settlement with HSBC.  All of these settlements required the financial institutions to provide various forms of consumer relief and implement new standards for servicing mortgage loans and handling foreclosures, and for ensuring the accuracy of information provided in federal bankruptcy court.  The banks’ compliance obligations are overseen by an independent monitor and a joint federal-state monitoring committee.

Our cooperation is not limited to agencies in the United States.  Over the past few years, officials at the department coordinated with more than a dozen agencies, including those in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, to expose corruption in the foreign currency exchange market.  In 2015, the department announced parent-level guilty pleas from four major international banks in connection with the Antitrust and Criminal Division’s joint investigation into collusion and fraud in foreign exchange markets.  Those plea agreements included more than $2.5 billion in criminal fines and penalties.  In addition to the guilty pleas, UBS breached the terms of an earlier deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to plead guilty to a one-count felony charge of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), a critical benchmark rate for countless business dealings, and pay a criminal penalty of $203 million.  Our colleagues at the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority collected $1.9 billion in penalties from these same banks and HSBC, and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority collected $145 million in penalties from UBS.   

Our collaborative efforts included holding individuals accountable for financial wrong-doing.  Earlier this year a joint Criminal Division and Antitrust Division trial team convicted two traders who manipulated LIBOR.  These convictions are just one of the many successes that arose out of a diligent and wide-ranging collaboration among various enforcement agencies from the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office.  More than 20 individuals have been charged by the U.K. Serious Fraud Office for their roles in engaging in benchmark rate manipulation.

Our actions were successful because each agency appreciated the role other enforcers needed to play, regularly talked with each other and continually worked toward prompt and favorable outcomes. 

We have made great progress in combatting fraud in our financial markets and today’s meeting represents another building block in our cooperative efforts.  I know there is more work to be done, and I’m confident that these talented enforcers will continue working together to ensure the integrity of financial markets—to insist that these markets work for the benefit of all investors.  Our work is far from done.  I fully expect that the Department of Justice and our enforcement partners will continue to take action on these issues in the weeks and months to come.

FOIA websites provide a wealth of information to the public on how the FOIA works, including how to make a request for records and how to locate information that is already publicly available. To further improve these websites and promote consistency, we would like to invite you to join us on June 16th for a requester roundtable discussion on agency FOIA websites.

As part of the United States' Third Open Government National Action Plan, the Administration committed to "issuing guidance and creating best practices for agency web pages, including developing a template for key elements to encourage all agencies to update their FOIA websites to be consistent, informative, and user-friendly." Kicking-off this effort, OIP, in conjunction with the Office of Government Information Services, is hosting this requester roundtable to discuss best practices seen for agency FOIA websites.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on what agency FOIA websites should look like and any features or formats that you have seen that have been particularly helpful.  The details for the meeting are:

FOIA Requester Roundtable Meeting
Agency FOIA websites
Department of Justice – Office of Information Policy
1425 New York Avenue, NW – Suite 11050
June 16, 2016, 12:30 – 1:30 pm

You will need a picture ID to enter the building.

This meeting is open to the public as well as to all interested agency personnel.  We hope that you can join us for this discussion.

If you are interested in attending, please e-mail your name and phone number to OIP’s Training Officer at DOJ.OIP.FOIA@usdoj.gov with the subject line “June Requester Roundtable.”  As space for this meeting is limited, registration is required to attend.  If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact OIP's Training Officer at (202) 514-3642.

Courtesy of Assistant Attorney General John Cruden for the Environment and Natural Resources Division

The Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) began 2016 by vigorously promoting cooperative federalism through work with our state partners to enforce our nation’s pollution laws and prosecute wildlife traffickers.  We also met with numerous state officials in the environmental enforcement arena to exchange views and share expertise in a variety of areas.

Recently I had the honor of being the first ENRD Assistant Attorney General invited to speak to the annual meeting of the Environmental Council of the States, the national association of state and territorial environmental agency leaders.  I joined colleagues from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), New Mexico and academia to discuss innovative ways to measure the success of environmental enforcement.  In addition, other key members of the division partnered with the National Association of Attorneys General to present webinars on topics of mutual interest, such as e-discovery and share expertise regarding federal bankruptcy law in the context of environmental cases.

A key example of our fruitful work with state leadership is the record-breaking settlement with BP in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill litigation.  On April 4, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana entered the final consent decree in the litigation, thereby resolving civil claims of the United States and the five Gulf Coast states against BP.  The claims arose from the 2010 blowout of the Macondo well and the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Under the consent decree, BP will pay the U.S. and the five Gulf States more than $20 billion, including: First, a $5.5 billion civil penalty; second, more than $8.1 billion in natural resource damages; third, $600 million in further reimbursement of clean-up costs and some royalty payments; and finally, up to $6 billion in economic damage payments for the Gulf States or their local units of government.  This resolution is the largest settlement with a single entity in Department of Justice history; it includes the largest civil penalty ever awarded under the Clean Water Act, the largest ever natural resources damages settlement and massive economic damages payments to our state partners.

We have had many other significant state-federal enforcement actions this year and the following are highlights of cooperative federalism in action.

In the most recent federal-state coordinated enforcement efforts against oil spills in and around the Gulf of Mexico, ORB Exploration LLC (ORB) agreed to pay civil penalties and state response costs and to implement corrective measures to resolve alleged violations of  federal and state environmental laws stemming from three crude oil spills that occurred in 2013 and 2015 from two of ORB’s Louisiana facilities in the Atchafalaya River Basin, as well as violations of Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure regulations at its Frog Lake oil storage barge.  Under a proposed consent decree lodged on Earth Day in federal court, ORB will pay $615,000 in federal civil penalties for the spills and other environmental violations, pay $100,000 to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for civil penalties and response costs and take measures to improve spill response preparedness and prevent future oil spills.

ENRD also recently partnered with Utah to negotiate an agreement with Salt Lake County to resolve alleged Clean Water Act violations associated with the county’s stormwater management program.  The agreement, if approved by the court after a public comment period, would require the county to take specific measures to reduce illegal stormwater and non-stormwater discharges to Jordan River Valley surface waters by thoroughly implementing the requirements of its municipal separate storm sewer system permit.  The county also will pay a civil penalty of $280,000 to be split evenly between the United States and the state.

In addition, ENRD joined with Tennessee to negotiate an agreement with OXY USA Inc. (OXY), a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Company, to clean up contaminated water and sediments in the Ocoee River and one of its watersheds at the Copper Basin Mining District in Polk County, Tennessee.  The settlement, once approved by the court, will require the company to spend an estimated $40 million to maintain and operate a water treatment system, prevent access by the public to contaminated water and monitor contamination in the Ocoee River.  OXY also will reimburse both EPA and Tennessee for costs incurred in overseeing the work required by the settlement.  This settlement, combined with work previously performed at the site, directs over $217 million toward cleaning up the contamination at this site.

ENRD and the state of West Virginia also took a joint enforcement action under federal and state law against Justice Companies Inc., to address unlawful discharges resulting from the construction of 20 dams in West Virginia trout streams.  In February, the court entered a consent decree and stipulated judgment to resolve the federal and state claims.  Under the consent decree and stipulated judgment, the defendants will remove the dams, restore the streams, provide compensatory mitigation, and pay a civil penalty of $345,000, to be shared evenly by the state and federal governments.

These cases exemplify cooperative federalism in environmental enforcement, a top priority for ENRD.  We place a high value on these partnerships with state and local governments as they are crucial to fulfilling ENRD’s mission on behalf of the American people.

ENRD is also continuing our cooperative relationship with states in criminal prosecutions this year.  To that end, prosecutors from ENRD’s Environmental Crimes Section have provided training to state partners by sharing their criminal enforcement experience, as well as discussing the division’s new Worker Safety Program.

These state connections allowed us to criminally prosecute eight individuals for wildlife trafficking in violation of the Lacey Act, which led to the conviction of five defendants on felony charges.  The cases arose from a covert investigation conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation and known as “Operation Roadhouse.”  This joint effort also enabled the state to issue citations to over a hundred individuals for violations of state law.

I look forward to continuing and enhancing ENRD’s partnerships with our state and local government counterparts to advance our shared goals on behalf of the American people.

This past March marked the seventh year that agency Chief FOIA Officers submitted to the Department of Justice their Chief FOIA Officer Reports detailing all the steps their agencies have taken to embrace the President's and the Department of Justice's 2009 FOIA Memoranda. These Chief FOIA Officer Reports have served as a valuable resource for agencies to describe the various initiatives undertaken to improve their administration of the FOIA. With the completion of agencies’ 2016 Chief FOIA Officer Reports this past Sunshine Week, today OIP releases its summary and assessment of these reports and the progress made in implementing the Department of Justice's 2009 FOIA Guidelines.

Similar to last year, this year’s summary is broken down into five parts detailing the efforts of agencies in each of the five key areas addressed in the Department's 2009 FOIA Guidelines:

• Applying the Presumption of Openness,
• Having Effective Systems for Responding to Requests,
• Making Information Available Proactively,
• Utilizing Technology, and
• Reducing Backlogs and Improving Timeliness.

Agencies and the public are encouraged to read both OIP’s summary and each agency’s individual report to learn more about the various efforts and steps taken over the last reporting year to improve the administration of the FOIA across the government.

In addition to the summary, OIP’s 2016 assessment once again provides a visual snapshot of agency efforts in several key areas of FOIA administration. The assessment is separated between high and low volume FOIA agencies and includes a five-step scoring system, overall scores for each assessed section, and the inclusion of a detailed methodology. The full assessment is provided in both an open format and in PDF.

Finally, as part of the 2016 summary and assessment, OIP has once again included guidance based on our review of the 2016 reports to assist agencies in making further improvements in the years ahead. As concluded in OIP’s summary and assessment, "agencies continue to improve their administration of the FOIA through various initiatives connected to the five key areas established in the Department's 2009 FOIA Guidelines." Based on our review of the reports, OIP's guidance encourages agencies to focus on closing their ten oldest requests and appeals, to successfully post their quarterly FOIA reports throughout the year, and to conduct self-assessments of their FOIA administration to aid in making further improvements in upcoming years.    

OIP’s yearly assessment is intended to serve as a vehicle to both recognize agency successes and to identify areas where further improvement can be made. You can read OIP’s 2016 Summary and Assessment of Agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports on our Reports page alongside previous summaries and assessments. OIP’s guidance for further improvement based on our review of agency 2016 Chief FOIA Officer Reports is available as a part of this year’s summary as well as on our Guidance page.

Courtesy of Helam Gebremariam, Counsel, Office for Access to Justice

One year ago this week, civil unrest broke in Baltimore following the tragic death of Freddie Gray.  In the midst of these events, Baltimore Library Manger Melanie Towsend Diggs made a critically important decision – to keep the Enoch Pratt Free Library open.  In the subsequent days, the library, located in downtown Baltimore – at the very intersection where community members, police and media converged – became a safe space for the community’s organizing, dialogue and healing.  Ms. Diggs’ decision highlighted the vital role that civic institutions, including libraries, play in communities, particularly in times of crisis.

Not long after the unrest, Maryland Legal Aid (MLA), a private, non-profit law firm that provides free legal services to low-income people throughout the state, came to Ms. Diggs with a proposal for collaboration.  Their idea was simple: bring civil legal aid attorneys into the library on a weekly basis to provide free legal services to community members on their civil legal issues.  As part of this new “Lawyer in the Library” project, MLA attorneys come to the library to offer individual consultations on civil legal matters including domestic violence, child support, housing and public benefits issues.  In addition, on one Saturday afternoon per month, the library hosts a clinic dedicated to reentry issues.  During this clinic approximately 15 volunteer attorneys work to help justice-involved individuals and returning citizens expunge their court and police records from public access.  In the past year hundreds of local community members have benefited from this unique partnership.

This week, MLA and the library hosted a “Lawyer in the Library” event in honor of the Justice Department’s inaugural National Reentry Week.  My colleagues at the Office for Access to Justice and I had the privilege of attending this event, which served more than two dozen individuals during the two-hour period.  Events such as these continue to raise awareness about the significant support that civil legal aid provides to low-income and vulnerable populations, including those that are justice-involved.  This is absolutely essential given that research consistently shows that a majority of low- and moderate-income Americans don’t see the issues they’re encountering as legal problems having potential legal solutions.  A family may be concerned about unsafe housing conditions or about a child being expelled from school, but may identify those as personal or social problems rather than as legal issues that a civil legal aid attorney may be able to resolve.  The same is often true for justice-involved individuals and those returning to their communities after serving time: many don’t know that legal aid attorneys can help expunge their criminal records, modify child support orders, reinstate driver’s licenses, prevent illegal evictions and much more.

Increasing federal support of and access to civil legal aid, including for justice-involved and reentering individuals, has been a priority of the Obama Administration, the Justice Department and the Office for Access to Justice.  In 2012, the White House Domestic Policy Council and the Justice launched the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR), which brought together 17 federal agencies to inspire new collaborations to better engage civil legal aid providers as federal granteees, sub-grantees and partners.  In September 2015, President Obama issued a presidential memorandum formally establishing the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (WH-LAIR), increasing the number of federal partners to 21 and charging the membership to work collaboratively to include civil legal aid in appropriate programs that address vulnerable and under-served populations. 

National Reentry Week gives us the opportunity to reflect on the many obstacles that justice-involved individuals and returning citizens face.  It also gives us the opportunity to identify the many human faces of reentry and the diverse array of community partners that dedicate their life and their work to helping people get a fresh start.  Civil legal aid programs and libraries are two important pieces of this puzzle – this “Lawyer in the Library” partnership highlights just that.  Through this collaboration, two institutions that have long lived in the community and reflect the community now partner to serve the community in pursuit of a second chance.  

Courtesy of Principal Deputy Director Bea Hanson of the Office on Violence Against Women and Courtesy of Assistant Attorney General Karol V. Mason for the Office of Justice Programs 

This month, as part of Sexual Assault Awareness month, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced the Justice Department’s plan to release a protocol for pediatricians, forensic nurses and other health care providers who work with children, which will offer evidence-based recommendations for caring for child victims of sexual abuse.  Today, we are excited to share that the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) released the National Protocol for Sexual Abuse Medical Forensic Examinations, Pediatric (Pediatric SAFE Protocol).

As we all know, sexual violence is a serious problem that impacts all of us, and the Justice Department is committed to supporting communities across the country in their efforts to implement effective responses to support victims of sexual violence and hold perpetrators accountable.  The medical forensic examination is an integral component of this response.  It is designed to address victims’ health care needs and promote their safety and healing.  In addition, forensic evidence collected during the examination – information gathered during the medical history, documentation of exam findings and forensic samples, if potentially available – can help facilitate case investigation and prosecution of perpetrators of sexual violence.  Success in meeting these objectives depends not only on the skills and knowledge of the health care providers conducting the examination, but also the coordinated efforts of all disciplines involved in the response to victims.

In September 2004, the Attorney General released A National Protocol for Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examinations, Adults/Adolescents (SAFE Protocol), which provides detailed, voluntary guidelines for criminal justice and health care practitioners in responding to the immediate needs of adult and adolescent sexual assault victims.  In 2013, the Attorney General released a second edition of the SAFE Protocol that reflected changes in practice and technology since 2004 and emphasized the need for victim-centered care.  After the release of the second edition of the SAFE Protocol, OVW heard from stakeholders in the field that there was a need for a similarly definitive document addressing the needs of child victims.  Recognizing that the care of a prepubescent child following sexual abuse is significantly different than that of an adolescent or adult, OVW partnered with the International Association of Forensic Nurses (IAFN) to develop the Pediatric SAFE Protocol. 

The Pediatric SAFE Protocol was developed through a collaborative process with national experts represented by child abuse pediatricians, pediatric sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs), children’s hospitals, emergency departments, child advocacy centers, community and systems-based advocacy programs, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors.  We also relied on the expertise of our federal partners in the Office of Justice Programs’ Office of the Assistant Attorney General, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Office for Victims of Crime; FBI; and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service to ensure the new Pediatric SAFE Protocol would be a comprehensive guide for an immediate response to child sexual abuse.

This much awaited protocol not only provides specific guidance on forensic medical examinations, it clearly identifies the need for a coordinated community response to child sexual abuse and the roles of victim advocates, law enforcement, prosecutors, child protective services and forensic scientists in a community’s response.  As Attorney General Lynch said in her speech at the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week awards ceremony, “I am hopeful that it will help bolster efforts nationwide to care for the most vulnerable victims of sexual abuse.  No child should ever have to experience that kind of abuse – and no child who does should be forced to bear that burden alone.”

We hope communities across the country will use the Pediatric SAFE Protocol as a roadmap to establish, strengthen or enhance their immediate response to child sexual abuse and promote the healing and well-being of these most vulnerable victims.  Communities interested in learning more about the protocol can contact IAFN for technical assistance through Kids TA, a project supported by the Office on Violence Against Women’s Technical Assistance Initiative.  The Kids TA project is designed to disseminate the Pediatric SAFE Protocol and provide education and resources to all sexual abuse responders regarding the unique needs of the sexually abused prepubescent child.

IAFN and OVW are hosting a webinar on June 16, 2016, at 3:30 p.m. EDT that will provide more details on the key recommendations of the protocol.  Registration information and technical assistance is available at www.kidsta.org.

The Pediatric SAFE Protocol is available at www.justice.gov/ovw/selected-publications.