US Sentencing Commission releases FY 2025 second quarter federal sentencing data

While I was distracted by all the Supreme Court end-of-Term action, last week the US Sentencing Commission released its latest federal sentencing quarterly data report which is titled “2nd Quarter Release, Preliminary Fiscal Year 2025 Data Through March 31, 2025.”  Because these data only capture a little more than two months of data with the Trump Administration fully in charge of the US Justice Department, it remains unclear just whether and when we may see a new Administration’s new priorities reflected in new patterns of federal sentencing outcomes.  However, there are still a couple of datat points in this latest USSC data run that caught my eye. 

Specificlaly, as Figure 1 in this new report details, it seem that there has been a relative uptick in immigration cases and downtick in drug cases as a percentage of the overall caselooad.  For Fiscal Year 2024 (which ended September 31, 2024), the USSC data show 30% of the federal cases sentenced were immigraton cases, and 29.6% were dug cases.  But these new FY 2025 second quarter federal sentencing data show that over the last six months, 34.7% of the federal cases sentenced were immigraton cases, and 26.5% were dug cases.  I will be very interested to see if this trend continues.  

Most other data in this report showcase the relative steadiness of federal sentencing patterns, though there surely could be future USSC data runs that may reflect and reveal developing changes resulting from new Justice Department leadership.  Stay tuned.