Report At A Glance: Recidivism and Federal Sentencing Policy

2010 Cohort (2021-2022 Study)

This series of reports examines recidivism of federal offenders released from incarceration or sentenced to a term of probation in 2010, combining data regularly collected by the Commission with data compiled from criminal history records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This report provides an overview of recidivism for these offenders and information on key offender and offense characteristics related to recidivism. This report also compares recidivism outcomes for offenders released in 2010 to federal offenders released in 2005.

The final study group of 32,135 offenders satisfied the following criteria:

  • United States citizens;
  • Re-entered the community during 2010 after discharging their sentence of incarceration or by commencing a term of probation in 2010;
  • Not reported dead, escaped, or detained;
  • Have valid FBI numbers that could be located in criminal history repositories (in at least one state, the District of Columbia, or federal records).

     

Reports


 

2005 Cohort (2016-2020 Study)

The Commission also studied offenders who were either released from federal prison after serving a sentence of imprisonment or placed on a term of probation in 2005. In the future, the Commission will release additional publications discussing specific topics concerning recidivism of federal offenders.

The offenders studied in this project are 25,431 federal offenders who:

  • are citizens;
  • re-entered the community during 2005 after discharging their sentence of incarceration or by commencing a term of probation in 2005;
  • have valid FBI numbers which could be located in criminal history repositories (in at least one state, the District of Columbia, or federal records);
  • are not reported dead, escaped, or detained, and
  • have a pre-sentence investigation report that was submitted to the Commission with a federal sentence that was not vacated.

     

Reports


 

 

 

Infographic - 2010 Cohort
Infographic - 2005 Cohort