Sentencing Reform Act 1984

Background

From the early 20th century until roughly 1970, the federal sentencing system, like that of virtually all states, followed an indeterminate model that was ostensibly structured around offender rehabilitation. Congress established statutory penalties for criminal offenses with wide sentencing ranges that afforded judges substantial discretion to impose what they deemed appropriate punishments accounting for the unique nature of an individual defendant, the particular circumstances surrounding the offenses, and other relevant variables. Sentences of imprisonment were of indefinite length and were largely governed by correctional officials within the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and parole officials within the U.S. Parole Commission. The former rewarded inmates for positive institutional adjustment by liberal grants of “good time” credits and, correspondingly, penalized poor adjustment by removing or disallowing time credits. The Parole Commission convened periodically and employed a system of written, arguably objective guidelines to determine whether an offender's rehabilitative efforts and likelihood of recidivism warranted release and, if so, under what conditions. Under this system, an offender deemed rehabilitated and worthy of release could serve as little as one-third of the original sentence imposed.

A major benefit of the indeterminate sentencing model was the flexibility it provided to match limited prison resources (e.g., beds and programming) with offenders' needs. In particular, sound management enabled correctional officials to regulate systemic growth and resultant overcrowding. Indeed, the federal prison population remained relatively constant for the 50 years preceding 1975.

The 1970s ushered in a nationwide chorus of criticism for indeterminate sentencing and its underpinning assumption, namely that following an appropriate period of supervision and treatments, [Page 886]offenders could be rehabilitated and safely reintegrated into the community. During this period, sentiment grew that rehabilitative programming was simply not effective in either protecting against risk of future public harm or reducing re-offense rates. Additionally, civil rights advocates, such as the American Friends Service Committee, charged that indeterminate sentencing caused unwarranted disparities among comparable defendants, namely with regard to race. Disparities were also cited among the differences in sentence lengths between judges, categories of offenses, and geographical regions. Conservative thinkers, such as James Q. Wilson, concurrently argued that indeterminate sentencing resulted in unduly lenient sentences.

One of the most prominent calls for sentencing reform came from Judge Marvin E. Frankel, whose seminal work Criminal Sentences: Law without Order (1974) decried the absence of rules and uniform standards in sentencing. Judge Frankel advocated the abolition of indeterminate sentencing and the creation of sentencing guidelines by independent, authoritative bodies of judges, academics, and practitioners. A notable convert to Judge Frankel's ideas was Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who first introduced federal legislation seeking to implement a guidelines system in the late 1970s. Senator Kennedy was particularly troubled by allegations that indeterminate sentencing led to gross racial disparities. Whereas numerous states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Oregon, abolished indeterminate sentencing in favor of guidelines systems developed and overseen by administrative sentencing commissions in a timely manner, it took years of debate and compromise before Congress passed and the president approved a bill enacting such changes in the federal system. (SRA, as amended, is codified at 18 U.S.C. §§3551–3559, 3561–3566, 3581–3586 and 28 U.S.C. §§991–998.)

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