Methodology

# 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.