This paper provides an overview of the federal sentencing system. For historicalcontext, it first briefly discusses the evolution of federal sentencing during the past fourdecades, including the landmark passage of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA),1 inwhich Congress established a new federal sentencing system based primarily on sentencingguidelines, as well as key Supreme Court decisions concerning the guidelines. It thendescribes the nature of federal sentences today and the process by which such sentencesare imposed. The final parts of this paper address appellate review of sentences; therevocation of offenders' terms of probation and supervised release; the process whereby theUnited States Sentencing Commission (the Commission) amends the guidelines; and theCommission's collection and analysis of sentencing data.

"[The report] finds that supervision -– probation and parole -– drives high numbers of people, disproportionately those who are Black and brown, right back to jail or prison, while in large part failing to help them get needed services and resources. In states examined in the report, people are often incarcerated for violating the rules of their supervision or for low-level crimes, and receive disproportionate punishment following proceedings that fail to adequately protect their fair trial rights."--Publisher website.

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Seamlessly blending history with an easy presentation of day-to-day realities and empirical evidence, Tonry proposes tangible, specific solutions that can serve as a platform for the reform of a criminal justice system no one would knowingly have chosen yet one that no one seems able to change.