# Violation Tracker > 700,000+ corporate penalties totaling over $1 trillion since 2000. The largest free corporate misconduct database in the world. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/violation-tracker **Official site:** https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org **Category:** newsgathering **Also covers:** data ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** Public database of public records operated by an established 501(c)(3) nonprofit since 2015. No account required for basic searches. Minimal data collection. No tracking concerns for journalist use. The only privacy consideration is that paid subscribers provide payment information through the subscription system. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — independent security review pending - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-02 - **Last agent-verified:** 2026-04-02 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Investigative reporters covering corporate accountability, regulatory enforcement, white-collar crime, and environmental violations. Business reporters building company compliance profiles. Academic researchers studying corporate misconduct patterns. ESG analysts and labor organizers tracking repeat offenders. ## Editorial take Violation Tracker does something no other free tool does: it aggregates enforcement actions from 450+ federal, state, and local agencies into one searchable database. Environmental fines, wage theft settlements, workplace safety penalties, consumer protection actions, antitrust cases, financial fraud penalties — all linked to parent companies. That parent-subsidiary matching is the killer feature. Agency records rarely indicate corporate ownership. Violation Tracker maps 1,900+ parent companies to their subsidiaries, so a search for 'Amazon' surfaces penalties against subsidiaries that would otherwise be invisible. The data covers 2000 to present and includes both civil and criminal cases. It's been cited by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fortune, and the LA Times. EPA ECHO is deeper on environmental compliance (800,000+ regulated facilities, weekly updates, 130+ data fields per facility), but it only covers environmental statutes. Violation Tracker is shallower per agency but vastly wider — banking, labor, consumer protection, safety, discrimination, price-fixing, bribery, and more, all in one place. Launched in 2015, now expanded to Violation Tracker UK (117,000 cases from 80 UK agencies since 2010) and Violation Tracker Global (57 countries, focused on 1,600 multinationals). Directed by Philip Mattera at Good Jobs First's Corporate Research Project. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Researching a company's full enforcement history across agencies before an interview. Identifying repeat corporate offenders in specific violation categories. Finding patterns in industry-wide regulatory actions. Background research for investigative business stories. Comparing penalty totals across parent companies. Academic research on corporate misconduct trends. **Not for:** Real-time enforcement monitoring — updates happen periodically, not live. International coverage beyond the 57 countries in VT Global. Environmental compliance details at the facility level (use EPA ECHO for that). Privately held small businesses or individuals. Consent decrees or non-monetary enforcement actions that don't involve a penalty amount. ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Free search and display. Paid subscriptions for downloads and saved searches. Tier 3: $150/month ($1,500/year) for up to 10,000 downloads per search and 25 saved searches. Academic bulk datasets available by contacting Philip Mattera directly. - **Free option:** yes ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** unknown - **Data jurisdiction:** United States. Good Jobs First is a 501(c)(3) based in Washington, DC. All US data sourced from public federal, state, and local government enforcement records. UK and Global versions hosted separately. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Public database of public records. No account required for searching and viewing results. Subscribers provide email and payment info. Good Jobs First collects minimal user data. The underlying enforcement data is inherently public information drawn from government sources. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Always cross-reference findings with original agency records — Violation Tracker aggregates but sometimes lags behind the latest enforcement actions. Use the parent company search to capture violations across subsidiaries. Verify penalty amounts and dates against primary sources before publication. For environmental stories, supplement with EPA ECHO for facility-level compliance detail. Note that only cases with monetary penalties are included — non-monetary enforcement actions are excluded. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Good Jobs First (501(c)(3) nonprofit, Washington, DC). Founded 1998 by Greg LeRoy. Corporate Research Project directed by Philip Mattera since 2001. - **Funding model:** Nonprofit funded by foundations and grants, including Ford Foundation and Surdna Foundation. Subscription revenue from paid download tiers. Academic licensing fees for bulk datasets (400+ faculty and graduate students at 274 universities in 35 countries have licensed full datasets). - **Business model:** Free public search tool supported by nonprofit funding. Revenue supplemented by tiered subscriptions for data downloads and saved searches, plus academic bulk licensing. No advertising. No commercial data resale. - **Built for journalism:** no **Known issues:** Data updates are periodic, not real-time — new enforcement actions can take months to appear. Only includes cases with monetary penalties; non-monetary enforcement actions and consent decrees without fines are excluded. Parent-subsidiary matching, while excellent, covers ~1,900 parents — smaller or newly restructured corporate families may not be fully mapped. Agency source data quality varies: some agencies publish enforcement data inconsistently or with long delays. European environmental and labor enforcement data is particularly sparse in the Global version due to poor government disclosure practices. Download and saved-search features require a paid subscription. The free tier shows results but restricts some data fields. --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/violation-tracker Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology