U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: Results of the Federal Judicial Center's 1996 Survey. Report to the Committee on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

摘要

The federal judiciary has now had nine years of experience with the Sentencing Guidelines promulgated by the U.S. Sentencing Commission under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. During this time only a few attempts have been made to assess systematically the views and experiences of those who work with the guidelines on a daily basis. To fill this gap in available data, and to obtain information that will be useful to the Sentencing Commission as it conducts a comprehensive review and assessment of the Sentencing Guidelines, the Federal Judicial Center, at the request of the Committee on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conference of the United States, undertook a survey of all Article III judges and chief probation officers regarding their experiences with and views of the federal Sentencing Guidelines. This report presents the results of that survey. Overall, responses did not reflect a groundswell of support for major overhaul of the guidelines. This might have been in part because, as some respondents noted, the questionnaire asked about many specific issues but did not focus on questions about the philosophical approach underlying the guidelines. On the other hand, where we provided opportunities for open-ended comment about the guidelines, more respondents commented positively about the guidelines than expressed opposition. In general, chief probation officers were less supportive of change to the current guideline sentencing system than were judges.