"In effect, this is a performance indicator of US policies over time. One might compare, for instance, how likely we would be to hear charges of prisoner abuse and torture if one of the president's predecessors were in office," Regan said.

"Our report suggests that the behaviors we observe are a reflection of the policy directives of the Administration. Given the grades received by earlier administrations, our indicators point to a somewhat unique period in United States history with regard to its support for broad principles of human rights."

In general the CDP's annual report card uses a weighted score based on seven indicators that reflect the policies and preferences of an administration to issues of human rights. Those seven indicators are:

• references to human rights in the State of the Union address
• Amnesty International's report on human rights violations by the US
• child welfare provisions
• approval of requests for asylum from highly repressive countries
• visits by heads of states from highly repressive countries
• the number of human rights agreements signed during the year
• the percent of the discretionary budget allocated for human rights programs.

Each indicator is weighted in accordance with its importance to determining the direction of human rights policy and preferences. The report assumes, for instance, that reports of political prisoners and torture bear a greater impact on the record of the Administration than do budget allocations and child welfare provisions.

"While we don't necessarily use the performance of the Administration on our indicators to reflect a comparison to the performance of other countries," Regan said, "we do see it as one mechanism to evaluate the policies of the current administration vis-à-vis its predecessors, and the professed goals of the United States.

On most indicators of human rights policy other than those directly related to Amnesty International reports of human rights violations involving detention and torture, the Administration remained relatively static from last year, Regan said.

Data from three previous presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush I) are used to establish a standard by which a grade for the current administration is determined each year. The standard is predicated on the mean score on each indicator that results from the combined policies of the Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and the current presidential record. The current performance is then based on the extent of the deviation from this mean. In effect, the policies over the past 25 years set a baseline from which current years are evaluated. In this case, each of the past presidents used to establish the baseline would have received better grades than the current Administration.

- Press release from Eurekalert.