This is one of those things the media is profoundly stupid at. For example:

> Johnston and her coauthor, Andrew Joy, BS, also of Western New Mexico University, reviewed data on mass shootings amassed by media outlets, the FBI and advocacy organizations, as well as scholarly articles, to conclude that “media contagion” is largely responsible for the increase in these often deadly outbursts.

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contag...

In other words, widespread media coverage of mass shootings has increased the number of mass shootings, because the perpetrators do it for the attention and seeing how much attention it gets encourages future perpetrators. So now the media does its level best not to inflame the public and give unnecessary publicity to these monsters.. or not.

It's the same kind of thing here. The deterrent effect you're looking for comes from people talking about the major tax evasion cases the IRS is winning. It gets reduced by publicly lamenting a lower enforcement budget -- which would have no effect on deterrence if nobody was talking about it.

It's way more important that people understand that the IRS is prosecuting people than whether the actual number of people they're prosecuting goes up or down. And they definitely still are.