New US Sentencing Commission data on retroactive application of criminal history amendments
Last year, US Sentencing Commission voted for (delayed) retroactive application of its Guideline amendments relating to criminal history. There were two major parts to these amendment that reduced the sentencing range for certain defendants with “status” points (Part A) and for other defendants who would now be deemed “zero-point” offenders (Part B). And last week, the Commission release some new data on how retroactivity is playing out in district courts. Here are links to the USSC’s data reports:
There are lots of interesting little stories in these data runs, but I figured I might here highlight the top-line numbers. Specifically, for the Part A “status point” amendment, a total of 2,988 defendants have received sentence reductions averaging 10 months. For the Part B “zero point” amendment, a total of 2,143 defendants have receive sentence reductions averaging 13 months.
Adding this up, we get at total of 57,738 months of reduced federal prison time (which is a little over 4800 years of imprisonment for those not great at dividing by 12). Given that the average annual cost of federal incarceration is over $42,000, we might reasonably calculate a savings of over $200 million to US taxpayers resulting from the Commission’s decision to make its new criminal history guidelines retoractive.
I presume future retroactivity data runs will report in some more defendants getting reductions under the new guidelines, and I also expect other data will also show a significant number of newly sentenced defendants also benefiting from these new criminal history guidelines. And especially since there were built on the USSC’s copious revidivism data, I am hopeful that there reduction do not come at any real public safety costs.