United States Sentencing Commission

Introduction to the 2025 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics

This is the thirtieth edition of the United States Sentencing Commission’s Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics. This Sourcebook contains descriptive statistics on the application of the federal sentencing guidelines and provides selected district, circuit, and national sentencing data. This volume covers fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025, hereinafter “2025”). This Sourcebook, together with the 2025 Annual Report, constitutes the annual report referenced in 28 U.S.C. § 997, as well as the analysis, recommendations, and accounting to Congress referenced in 28 U.S.C. § 994(w)(3). The Commission received documentation on 66,662 federal felony and Class A misdemeanor cases involving individuals sentenced in fiscal year 2025.¹ The Commission coded and edited information from the sentencing documents in these cases into its comprehensive, computerized data collection system.

The Commission first released sentencing data in its 1988 Annual Report and reported this data annually until 1996. That year, the Commission compiled sentencing data into a new publication, the Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics. In 2019, the Sourcebook edition reporting fiscal year 2018 data was substantially revised and expanded. Existing tables were revised to reflect current sentencing practices. Many figures were updated to make them easier to understand and were presented in color while others were removed and the data on them presented in new ways. Additional analyses regarding drug and immigration crimes were added, and new sections on firearms and economic offenses were included. Trend analyses were added to each of the major sections. The section on Sentenced Organizations was also expanded. Finally, Appendix B, which provides sentencing data for each judicial district, was completely redesigned to reflect current sentencing practices.

Beginning with that 2018 Sourcebook, the Commission made important methodological changes in the way the data was presented. Principal among them was the way cases were assigned to a “type of crime” (previously called offense type). Beginning with fiscal year 2018 data, the guideline (or guidelines) that the court applied in determining the sentence determines the crime type category to which a case is assigned. Also, the names of some of the crime type categories were revised and some outdated categories were removed from the tables and figures. Another important methodological change was that sentences were capped at 470 months for all analyses. Additionally, cases involving the production of child pornography were reassigned to the sexual abuse crime type. Previously, these cases were assigned to the child pornography offense type in the Sourcebook.

Because of these methodological changes, direct comparisons between data for Sourcebooks from fiscal year 2018 and later years cannot always be made to data reported in the Sourcebooks for years before fiscal year 2018.

In 2024, the Commission made substantial revisions to the section on sentencing appeals. The Commission no longer collects and reports information about the guideline forming the basis for reversal or remand in sentencing appeals, or the reasonableness issues appealed in cases where the original sentence was reversed or remanded. Also, the Commission changed the way it categorizes appeals cases in which a brief was submitted by counsel for the defendant pursuant to the Supreme Court decision in Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967). Previously, “Anders Brief” cases were reported as a type of appeal. Beginning with the 2024 data, the Commission has sought to determine the type of appeal involved in an Anders Brief case (e.g., an appeal of the sentence only) and, when that information was available, has classified the case accordingly. Cases in which an Anders brief was filed, but where the sentencing documentation did not indicate the type of appeal, now are classified as “Unknown” types of appeals and are excluded from the data reported on Figure A and the remaining tables.

Also, beginning in 2024, the Commission provided new information about sentencing appeals. Figure A-2 reports information on the type of decisions that were appealed: original sentences, orders deciding a motion for a resentencing or other modification of sentence, or revocations of probation or supervised release. The Commission also began reporting information on the disposition of post-sentencing motion appeals. Additionally, the Commission began reporting data on the position of the sentence relative to the guideline range in original sentencing appeals, using the Commission’s standard classifications found on Table 29 of the Sourcebook for original sentences.

In this 2025 Sourcebook, the Commission has added new Table 15A, which presents information about “time served” sentences. Cases are reported based on the length of the time served sentence, when it could be determined, and by the type of crime involved in the case.