US Sentencing Commission releases over 1200 pages of public comment on proposed priorities
As noted in this post last month, the US Sentencing Commission recently released a “Federal Register Notice of Proposed 2024-2025 Priorities” which suggested that the USSC was eager in this coming guideline-amendment year to take a “big-picture” look at the full fedeal sentencing system and the Commission’s own work therein. Lots of folks rightly understood that the Commission was seeking lots of input, and many responded to its request for comment. And now the USSC has published those public comments, which in full pdf compilation runs over 1200 pages, in an accessible manner at this webpage and explained this way:
The July 2024 Compilation of Public Comment uses bookmarks as its table of contents. A bookmark is a navigation link that displays in the side panel within Adobe Acrobat (example). Some browsers open the bookmarks panel by default within the browser window. If you cannot access the bookmarks panel within the browser window, it is recommended that you save the PDF and reopen it in Adobe Acrobat for easier navigation.
The Commission reviews and catalogs all public comment submissions for future reference and official recordkeeping purposes. A representative sample of public comment is carefully selected, redacted, and posted online to provide the public with the kind of information considered by the Commissioners during their deliberations.
User Tips for Mobile Devices: The Compilation of Public Comment is over 1,200 pages and more easily navigated on a desktop. Hyperlinks below may not take mobile users to a specific letter and the bookmarks panel may not be accessible on mobile devices.
I believe I am partially responsible for a few dozen of these many pages of comments, and I am hopeful in the coming weeks and months to flag a wide range of comments that seems especially interesting or perhaps surprising. In the meantime, I will just say again that the Commission merits great credit for thinking big about federal sentencing and for encouraging the public to help in that endeavor.
Prior recent related post: