8. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Number of Convictions From 1976 to 2021: 1,081
Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia have secured convictions for over 1,000 individuals on a wide range of public corruption charges over the past 40 years. Despite the city’s notorious reputation as one of the most corrupt and contented in the U.S., these statistics do not even place Philly among the nation’s top five. However, government watchdogs and attorneys caution that conviction numbers alone do not fully encapsulate the extent of the issue. According to data from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, encompassing a large area from Philadelphia to Allentown, ranks seventh in the nation for total public corruption convictions over the last four decades.
