杰弗里·爱泼斯坦这名金融家、掮客、强奸犯和恋童癖于2019年死在曼哈顿的监狱牢房里，而在舆论与国会压力下，美国司法部于1月30日公布了超过300万页文件，数量多到几乎无人能通读。志愿软件工程师随后将其转换为可分析的格式，《经济学人》对该档案进行了审阅。

为区分其性犯罪相关内容，对140万封电子邮件按与犯罪的相关性打分，约1,500个线程被归入最严重类别，例如有人轻描淡写地提到虐待爱泼斯坦的“最小的女孩”。将近60%的邮件发给了受雇于他、让其生活更轻松的人，这种掩饰意味着一些如今声称并未了解其罪行程度的社交联系人可能确有其事。

其余邮件描绘出一个庞大的影响力与人情交换网络：在他500名主要通信对象中（不含其员工与商业伙伴），近20%涉及金融从业者，10%涉及科学家或医生，8%涉及媒体、娱乐与公关，而律师、政客、学者与商界人士各占6%，且绝大多数为美国人。文件还记录了对超过1,000名受害者的日常虐待，而司法部在过去七年里在起诉方面进展甚微，这种拖延与他18年前获得的从轻认罪协议同样令人费解。

Jeffrey Epstein, a financier, fixer, rapist and paedophile, died in a Manhattan prison cell in 2019, and under popular and congressional pressure the Department of Justice released over 3m pages of documents on January 30th, far too many for anyone to read. Volunteer software engineers then converted them into a format that could be analysed, and The Economist reviewed the archive.

To separate material tied to his sex crimes, 1.4m emails were scored for relevance, and around 1,500 threads fell into the most severe category, such as a correspondent making light of abusing Epstein’s “littlest girl”. Nearly 60% of emails went to people he paid to make his life easier, and that concealment means some social contacts who now say they did not grasp the extent of his crimes may be telling the truth.

The remaining emails depict a vast influence-and-favour-trading network: among his 500 main correspondents (excluding his staff and business partners), almost 20% involve financiers, 10% scientists or doctors, 8% media, entertainment and public relations, and 6% each lawyers, politicians, academics and businesspeople, with the vast majority being American. The files also describe routine abuse of over 1,000 victims, yet the DoJ has made little progress on charges over the past seven years, a delay as baffling as the leniency of his original plea bargain 18 years ago.

Source: The Epstein files tell a story of justice denied

Subtitle: Prosecutors have moved far too slowly

Dateline: 2月 12, 2026 07:08 上午