Federal Sentencing Guides

Methodology

Every guide on PlainSentencing is written against the primary source, the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Individual Offender Datafiles, FY2015 through the latest available fiscal year. We do not aggregate second-hand reports; we compute directly from the raw case-level records the USSC releases under its public-domain license.

Within-guidelines rates, above/below departure shares, disparity scores, and district rankings are derived from the same case-level fields. Disparity is computed as the percentage difference between a district's average imposed sentence and the national benchmark for the same offense mix, after aligning on offense_guideline and fiscal_year. Districts and offenses with fewer than 5 cases for a given metric are excluded for statistical reliability.

Guides draw on black-letter sources where appropriate - United States v. Booker (2005) for the advisory-guidelines framework, 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) for the sentencing factors, and the USSC Guidelines Manual for offense levels, criminal history categories, and departures. For policy context (mandatory minimums, safety valve, First Step Act), we cite the originating statutes and legislative record rather than secondary commentary.

Read the full methodology at our methodology page, or start with How to Read Sentencing Data on PlainSentencing.