Paul J. Hofer

Examining Changes in Federal Sentence Severity: 1980-1998

helpful editorial sug gestions. Introduction The last fifteen years witnessed two dramatic move ments in federal sentencing. The first?sentencing reform ?arose from widespread concern that imposed sentences were often misleading and sometimes arbi trary. The Sentencing Reform Act (sra) and sentencing guidelines were promulgated to make sentencing more honest, uniform, and proportionate. The question of whether these aims have been met remains controver sial, but the effort has at least been well documented and debated, and has frequently been evaluated through empirical research. The second movement?severity reform ? arose from a perception that too many criminals were getting off easy. It led to enactment of mandatory minimum penalties, increases in statutory maximums, directives from Congress to the Sentencing Commission to lengthen sentences, and decisions by the Commission itself to increase punishment for certain types of crime. Severity reform has been less well documented and less thoroughly evaluated than sentencing reform. For many people, the two historically-intertwined movements are indistinguishable. But in this paper we focus on changes in sentence severity, and document when the changes occurred and what types of offenders were affected. We offer some tentative conclusions about how the changes occurred.