GAO Report Confirms Failure of U.S. Guidelines

Abstract

questions make it clear that guidelines have failed?that they remain deeply unpopular and mired in controversy, that they have made case processing more expensive and time-consmning, and that they have not demonstrably reduced disparities. The silences in Commission's report became clear when General Accounting Office released its assessment of guidelines' first four years. Here are three examples. First, Commission never point-blank asked judges and other practitioners whether current guidelines system is better than federal sentencing system that preceded it. GAO did ask such questions, and concluded, prosecutors generally believed that guidelines improved sentencing system, while most judges, defense attorneys, and probation officers on balance did not believe guidelines were an improvement over prior system.1 Second, Commission report does not examine whether guidelines increased case processing times and costs. GAO, by contrast, reports that the guidelines increased system workload and that median case processing time from indictment to conviction increased by 29 percent (from 3.2 to 4.5 months), and that median time from conviction to sentencing increased by 41 percent (from 41 to 69 days).2 Along similar lines, Commission's 1991 annual report^ shows that trial rates, after holding steady around 11 percent of dispositions from 1988 to 1990, jumped by a third to 14.4% in 1991. Third, although Commission claims its data show significant reductions in disparity,4 body of report discusses disparity analyses only for eight narrowly defined crimes, for only three of which statistically significant conclusions were reached. GAO unambiguously concluded that it is impossible to determine how effective sentenc ing guidelines have been in reducing overall sentenc ing disparity.5 The Commission's silence concerning whether judges and others believe guidelines are an improvement over what preceded them and whether federal courts' handling of mrninal cases became more or less efficient under guidelines, and its exaggerated conclusions about disparities, are striking. Those are key questions which most observers want answered and are bases on which