Counting incidents

One entry is one enforcement action against one target. Where a single operation is announced by several agencies it is recorded once, with every participating organization listed against it. Follow-on actions against the same target are separate entries linked back to the original, so a long-running operation does not inflate the totals.

The counting rules below are recorded in the dataset and applied to every figure on this site.

• record_kind=umbrella_campaign records are excluded from incident totals.
• reported_* fields carry official aggregate counts; named_* fields carry counts derived from normalized person records. These are never added together.
• Extradition is recorded as a distinct person_action and is never counted as a second apprehension.
• Superseding indictments do not create new person records.
• null means unknown. 0 is used only where a reliable source explicitly establishes zero.
• record_kind=incident_component is excluded from deduplicated incident totals.
• record_kind=excluded_candidate is retained for auditability but excluded from verified incident totals.
• A guilty plea is counted in named_convicted_count because guilt was formally adjudicated; reported aggregate conviction fields remain source-specific.
• Month-level operation ranges are stored in *_precision fields when an exact day is not published; exact date fields remain null where appropriate.