Regular readers know I have been complaining for many months about the general failure of the US Sentencing Commission to address or release data concerning the COVID state of federal sentencing (example here). But as of today, I cannot complain quite so much because the US Sentencing Commission has just released here its "3rd Quarter ... Preliminary Fiscal Year 2020 Data Through June 30, 2020."
These new data provide the first official accounting of federal sentencing outcomes for the period from October 1, 2019 through June 20, 2020, and it is clear from these data that COVID concerns dramatically reduced the number of federal sentences imposed in the quarter comprised of the months of April, May and June 2020. Specifically, as reflected in Figure 2, it appears that the previous three quarters averaged roughly 20,000 federal sentencings, whereas the quarter ending in June 2020 saw only around 12,000 federal sentences. This is still a lot of sentencings, but seemingly the lowest quarterly number in decades.
In addition, as reflected in Figure 5, it appears that, along with total number of imposed sentences decreasing, so too did the average sentence imposed decrease significantly during the quarter ending in June 2020. Specifically, it appears that the previous quarters had federal sentences averaging roughly 38 months, whereas the quarter ending in June 2020 saw federal sentences averaging roughly 30 months. This leads me speculate that the sentencings that went forward during the COVID period may have generally been the less serious cases and/or that many federal judges were somewhat less inclined to impose longer federal prison terms during the COVID era.
In sum, these latest USSC data show that the number of sentences imposed in the first COVID quarter (April to June 2020) dropped about 40% and the length of the sentences imposed in this period drop over 20%. Very interesting, and now I am even more eager for the next data run and for even more intricate reporting and analysis from the US Sentencing Commission.
Comments
Post a Comment