How to Read Sentencing Data on PlainSentencing

District Profiles

Each federal judicial district on PlainSentencing has a profile page showing key sentencing metrics. Here is what each number means:

• Total cases — The number of defendants sentenced in the district during the selected time period. Larger districts handle thousands of cases per year. Smaller districts may handle a few hundred.
• Average sentence (months) — The mean sentence length for all defendants sentenced in the district. This includes all offense types, so it is influenced by the district case mix. Use offense-specific averages for more meaningful comparisons.
• Within-guideline rate — The percentage of sentences that fall within the calculated guideline range. National average is roughly 45-50 percent. Higher rates indicate closer adherence to guidelines.
• Below-range rate — The percentage of sentences below the guideline range, including both government-sponsored departures (cooperation) and judge-initiated variances.
• Disparity score — The average percentage deviation from national averages by offense type. Controls for case mix. Higher scores mean more deviation from national norms.

Offense Breakdowns

District profiles include offense-level data showing average sentences for each offense category prosecuted in the district. This is more informative than the overall average because it controls for case mix. If a district has a high overall average sentence, the offense breakdown reveals whether that is driven by harsh sentencing across the board or simply by a higher proportion of serious cases.

Year-Over-Year Trends

PlainSentencing covers FY2015 through FY2024 — a full decade of data. The trend view shows how a district sentencing patterns have changed over time. Significant changes may reflect shifts in judicial personnel, changes in prosecutorial priorities, policy changes like the First Step Act (2018), or evolving caseloads.

Common Misinterpretations

A few cautions when interpreting sentencing data:

• Higher average sentences do not automatically mean harsher judges. They may reflect a more serious caseload (more high-level drug trafficking, more violent crime).
• Low guideline compliance does not mean judicial recklessness. Many below-range sentences result from government-sponsored cooperation motions, which reflect prosecutorial decisions, not judicial leniency.
• Small districts have noisy data. A district that handles 100 cases per year will show more year-to-year volatility than one handling 3,000. Do not over-interpret single-year changes in small districts.
• Aggregate data hides individual variation. Two defendants convicted of the same offense in the same district may receive very different sentences based on cooperation, criminal history, and case-specific facts that aggregate statistics cannot capture.

Making the Most of PlainSentencing

For researchers: use the district comparison features and offense-level data to control for case mix when analyzing geographic variation. For journalists: the disparity scores and trend data highlight districts where sentencing patterns have changed or deviate from national norms. For defense attorneys: district profiles provide empirical context for sentencing arguments. For everyone: remember that aggregate data illuminates patterns but cannot predict individual case outcomes.

Why This Matters for Research and Journalism

Federal sentencing data is one of the most important public-records corpora produced by the U.S. government. Researchers, journalists, defense attorneys, and policy analysts rely on it to evaluate the fairness, consistency, and proportionality of the federal criminal justice system. PlainSentencing exists to make this dataset navigable for non-specialists without flattening the complexity that makes it meaningful.

Every district profile, ranking, and explainer on this site is derived from the U.S. Sentencing Commission Individual Offender Datafiles, which we recompute from the raw FY2015 through FY2024 records. The numbers presented here are reproducible from the source data, and the methodology that produced each chart and table is documented on our methodology page. Corrections, refinements, and questions are welcome at the contact address listed there.

For practitioners considering using this data in court filings, scholarly research, or journalism, please cite the underlying USSC datasets rather than PlainSentencing — we are a presentation layer, not the primary source. Our editorial role is to translate technical fields, explain methodological caveats, and surface comparisons that highlight meaningful patterns in the federal sentencing system.