Editor's Observations: Is Fact Bargaining Undermining the Sentencing Guidelines?

Abstract

This Issue of FSR focuses on a heretofore unpub lished survey and report presented earlier this year to the U.S. Sentencing Commission by its Probation Officers Advisory Group (POAG). The documents reveal the deep current of dissatisfaction among federal probation officers about what they see as the widespread existence of plea agreements that misrepresent the facts of cases and prosecutors who withhold key information from presentence investiga tion reports and courts. FSR invited a number of practitioners and academics to assess the POAG survey. In the pages that follow, eight commentators offer a remarkable array of interpretations and insights that illuminate the nature of fact bargaining under the sentencing guidelines and suggest possible responses by the Commission, the Department of Justice and the courts.