Research
The Commission collects, analyzes, and disseminates a broad array of information on federal crime and sentencing practices. The Office of Research and Data collects data from documents submitted by the courts in each case in which a defendant is sentenced. From that data, the Commission prepares and disseminates public reports on a wide variety of sentencing issues. The Commission also uses this data in its consulting capacity to the courts, Congress, and the Executive Branch.


Explore our research and data reports below or download our datafiles and perform your own analysis.
Public Access to Commission Data and Documents

Sourcebooks of Federal Sentencing Statistics


The Sourcebook contains descriptive statistics on the application of the federal sentencing guidelines and provides selected district, circuit, and national sentencing data. The latest edition reports information on offenders sentenced in fiscal year 2021 (October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021).

2021 Sourcebook Previous Years




Interactive Data Analyzer



You've got questions, IDA has data. The Interactive Data Analyzer (IDA) is an online tool that can be used to explore, filter, customize, and visualize federal sentencing data for research, policymaking, and sentencing purposes.

IDA presents annual data that is refreshed periodically with the latest information collected, received, and edited by the Commission.

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Research Reports
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Data Reports
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Quick Facts
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  • Federal Offenders in Prison
    As of January 2022, there were 153,079 offenders incarcerated in the Bureau of Prisons. Of these offenders, 134,757 are serving a sentence for a federal conviction, most commonly for drug offenses (N=63,994). Slightly more than half of offenders in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (54.2%) were...

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  • Robbery Offenses
    (August 2022) In fiscal year 2021, there were 1,290 robbery offenders sentenced in the federal system. Robbery offenses have decreased by 16.5% since FY 2017.

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Commission Datafiles
 
Individual Offenders

The Commission's individual datafiles provide information on the sentences imposed in cases involving individuals. In these datafiles the individual is the unit of analysis. These datafiles do not contain information from the Commission's Organizational, Resentencing, or Appeals Databases.

Corporate Offenders

The Commission's organizational datafiles provide information on the sentences imposed in cases involving organizational offenders (i.e., corporations, partnerships, and other entities having a legal existence separate from the individuals having an interest in them).

Special Projects

Commission datafiles that are used in various reports to Congress. These datafiles may contain information collected during a special coding project performed for a particular report and, therefore, will not be available in the Commission's fiscal year datafiles.

 

Reports to Congress
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