The federal witness protection program has granted new identities to more than 17,000 people. Despite a growing number of participants, the U.S. Marshals Service is cutting the staff assigned to protect witnesses, one of several problems that could affect witness security, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported yesterday.
In the past eight years, the number of federal personnel responsible for protecting witnesses has dropped by nearly 25 percent, Fine said. At the same time, the number of witnesses and their family members has climbed by 12 percent.
 
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More than 7,500 witnesses and 9,600 family members have been relocated and given new identities since 1970. The Bush administration projects that nearly 17,700 people will be in the program by September 2006.
Witness protection is offered to people who can provide key testimony and whose safety could be jeopardized because of their cooperation with prosecutors. The conviction rate for cases in which these witnesses have testified is 89 percent. No one who followed the rules has been killed or harmed while in the program, the Marshals Service says on its Web site.
A separate study cited by the Marshals Service, however, found that about 17 percent of protected witnesses with criminal pasts have been charged with new crimes.
Set up in 1970 to aid organized crime prosecutions, the program has more recently started taking in witnesses in terrorism and gang-related crimes.
Witness families are paid an average of about $60,000 a year until they find jobs in their new communities. The Marshals Service helps them locate housing, work and schools and taps into a secure national network of doctors and other professionals to provide services. Marshals help witnesses obtain new Social Security numbers, open bank accounts and find a church, synagogue or mosque.
But there are a host of rules, foremost among them a ban on contact with outside family, friends or associates.
The inspector general released only the executive summary of his 139-page report. The Justice Department did not disclose the entire study because it contains sensitive law enforcement information, Fine said.
