WASHINGTON -- The government's enforcement of civil rights laws declined sharply during the Bush administration, according to a study released yesterday.

Even though the level of complaints received by the Justice Department has remained relatively constant, far fewer criminal charges have been filed.

Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against 159 defendants for violations of civil rights laws in 1999.

By 2003, the number had dropped to 84, according to the study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a non-partisan research center at Syracuse University in New York.

The charges include abusive police tactics, racial violence, slavery or involuntary servitude, and blocked access to clinics.

During the same time, charges against terrorism suspects increased dramatically and charges on weapons violations doubled. In addition, federal charges on immigration violations increased more than 28 percent, according to the study.

Civil rights groups said that the report was not surprising.

"This confirms what everyone in the civil rights community has known for the past four years, which is that President Bush's Justice Department does not have a commitment to full enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws," said Christopher Anders, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Anders also said that the Bush civil rights record is worse than that of previous Republican presidents, including President Reagan and the first President Bush.

Justice Department officials did not return several phone calls for comment.

During his bid for re-election, Bush told the annual meeting of the National Urban League, a non-profit that seeks economic parity and civil rights for African Americans, that the administration has vigorously enforced civil rights laws.

The statement was repeated various times by campaign officials.

The Syracuse study also found that some of the decline in pursuing civil rights cases has to do with prosecutorial discretion.

In 2003, prosecutors filed formal charges in only 5 percent of civil rights cases referred to them. By contrast, they chose to pursue formal charges in 90 percent of referred immigration cases.

The main reasons cited to not pursue the civil rights cases included lack of evidence of criminal intent, no federal offense evident, no known suspect and "declined per instructions from the Department of Justice."

The study includes data from various sources, including Justice Department files, annual reports to Congress, and publications from U.S. courts.

Some of the material was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The study also found:

# The rate of civil rights complaints to the government has stayed steady since 1999 at about 12,000 a year.

# Civil sanctions against civil rights violators have also declined -- from 740 in 2001 to 576 in 2003. Civil suits can involve voting rights violations, employment and housing discrimination and other matters.

# The Justice Department's referrals for prosecution in civil rights cases also dropped under the Bush administration -- from 3,053 in 1999 to 1,903 in 2003.

# From 1999 to 2003, the number of people charged by the Justice Department with terrorism-related offenses increased from 99 to 899 and the number of people charged with weapons violations more than doubled, from about 4,900 to more than 10,000.

In addition, the number of people charged with immigration violations increased from 16,219 to 20,833 during the same time period.

# Civil rights cases have always been rare. During the last five years, the United States prosecuted more than 450,000 people on various charges. Only a small fraction of those -- about one in 1,000 -- were aimed at civil rights violators. By comparison, about 600 of every 1,000 involved drugs, weapons and immigration.

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