Federal Sentencing Guidelines

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The Federal Sentencing Guidelines are rules that set out a uniform sentencing policy for convicted defendants in the United States federal court system. The Guidelines are the product of the United States Sentencing Commission and are part of an overall federal sentencing reform package that took effect in the mid-1980s. The package was intended to provide determinate sentencing. This refers to sentencing whose actual limits are determined at the time sentence is imposed as opposed to indeterminate sentencing in which a sentence with a maximum (and, perhaps, a minimum) is pronounced but the actual sentence is determined by a parole commission or similar administrative body after the person has started serving their sentence. In general, indeterminate sentences are believed to support the rehabilitation and specific deterrence models of sentencing while determinate sentences are believed to support the general deterrence and just deserts models of sentencing. The federal effort followed guidelines activities in several states, notably Minnesota. Minnesota's Sentencing Guidelines Commission, however, initially sought consciously not to increase prison capacity through guidelines. That is, Minnesota assumed that the legislature should determine how much would be spent on prisons and that the sentencing commission's job was to allocate those prison beds in as rational a way as possible. The federal effort took the opposite approach. It determined how many prisons would be needed and essentially Congress was then required to fund those beds.

Though the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were styled as mandatory, the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in United States v. Booker found that the Guidelines, as originally constituted, violated the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, and the remedy chosen was excision of those provisions of the law establishing the Guidelines that made them mandatory standards. In the aftermath of Booker, the Guidelines are discretionary, meaning that judges may consider them but are not required to adhere to their standards in sentencing decisions. That being said, federal judges almost invariably use the Guidelines at least as a starting point when sentencing criminal defendants.

Any sentence outside of the scope of the guidelines requires a written explanation, by the judge, as to the reason for the discretion.

[edit] Guidelines Basics

The Guidelines determine sentences based primarily on two factors: (1) the conduct associated with the offense (the offense conduct, which produces the "offense level"), and (2) the defendant's criminal history (the "criminal history category"). The Sentencing Table[1] in the Guidelines Manual[2] shows the relationship between these two factors; for each pairing of offense level and criminal history category, the Table specifies a sentencing range, in months, within which the court may sentence a defendant. For example, for a defendant convicted on an offense with a total offense level of 22 and a criminal history category of I, the Guidelines recommend a sentence of 41-51 months, considering the year of the offense to be the same as the year of the guidelines. If, however, a person with an extensive criminal history (Category VI) committed the same offense in the same manner in the same modern timeline and not during the older guideline periods, the Guidelines would recommend a sentence of 84-105 months. [3]

Guidelines can either be indeterminate or determinate and depend on the year of the offense. Simply observing the top column on the sentencing table would lead one to believe that the guidelines would apply directly. However, they are divided into 5 sections depending on the year of the first offense and may be applied selectively. The Guidelines manual, therefore, needs to be read in the context of the previous guideline manuals in order to arrive at a sentencing determination. Conduct is irrelevant in the context of determinate guidelines while criminal history is irrelevant in the case of indeterminate guidelines.