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Newly Released Sentencing Data
Today the U.S. Sentencing Commission published its 2018 Annual Report and Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics.
The Annual Report presents an overview of the Commission’s work in fiscal year 2018. The Sourcebook was expanded this year to include more analyses of drug and immigration offenses, as well as new sections on firearms and economic offenses to give readers more complete information about the most frequently occurring federal crimes.
The Sourcebook contains information collected from 321,000 federal sentencing documents on 69,425 federal offenders.
Quick Highlights
- The federal sentencing caseload increased by 2,552 cases from fiscal year 2017, representing the first increase since fiscal year 2011.
- Immigration offenses accounted for the largest single group of federal crime—a position held by drug offenses in fiscal year 2017.
- Immigration offenses increased from 30.5% in fiscal year 2017 to 34.4% in fiscal year 2018 while drug and firearms offenses decreased.
- Methamphetamine offenses, the most common drug type in the federal system, continued to rise (up from 30.8% of drug offenses in fiscal year 2016 and 34.6% in fiscal year 2017 to 39.8% in fiscal year 2018).
- 75% of federal offenders were sentenced under the Guidelines Manual in fiscal year 2018.
Betting the research was done but either not reported or merged with the analysis for violent offenders, probably because they didn’t produce the desired results.
Interesting that they distinguished child porn offenses from all other sex offenses and noted that there were very few in 2006 to over 8000 in 2016. Pretty likely that they all came from those stings, most (if not all) of which should get reversed as a matter of law due to the government’s withholding of the software used. Been advising everyone in the group I’m in to find a lawyer and try to get back to court if they fall into that category.
I didn’t see mentioned the most heinous of all offenders…sex offenders. Everyone knows they cause more grief than all the other criminals put together…that is why there is an SO registry… ‘tongue in cheek’. Why worry about the bad guys when you have someone out there roaming about just waiting for an opportunity to urinate in public? Our society has consumed so much of the SO ‘coolade’ that the only fix may be a lobotomy.