Sentencing data are ubiquitous, as are discussions about the need for and importance of data collection and assessments. More and more criminal justice stakeholders acknowledge—or even proclaim—that data are valuable, if not essential, for sentencing decision-making. This is a positive development, and one that should not be too readily considered inevitable or without the potential for controversy. This essay explores the sentencing and data nexus and makes recommendations for the future.

The remarkable events of 2020 have disrupted and altered all sorts of plans, and this issue of FSR covers some of the many varied criminal justice and sentencing echoes of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and urgent new calls for racial justice. The intense and dynamic topics that have come to define 2020 in the United States necessarily impact, and may even consume our thinking, about modern criminal justice systems generally and federal sentencing realities in particular. Included in this FSR issue are reports and data and commentary that predate spring shutdowns and summer protests and related developments; but these materials now carry distinctive meaning and even a new urgency in light of 2020 challenges. It is impossible to fully assess in short order the impact of massive societal changes on the federal sentencing system, but we are hopeful this FSR issue can provided added perspective to a rapidly changing world that still often seems hard to fully grasp.

This essay, adapted from a speech upon receipt of the 2018 Richard P. Kern Memorial Award from the National Association of Sentencing Commissions, details why sentencing is “dang hard” and explores implications of that reality. The essay argues that the challenges of sentencing not only demand that all jurisdictions have a sentencing commission as an essential permanent agency, but also call for these commissions always to think big and to strive to work deep and wide to study all facets of modern criminal justice systems. The essay also contends that sentencing errors may be quite common and that, even if we manage to get sentencing “right” at the outset, changes in society and in individuals can make even “right” sentences wrong over time. Sensible humility about the likelihood of sentencing errors further suggests, for example: at the rule-making stage , having sentencing laws include sunset provisions and having sentencing commissions review and audit major guidelines and related sentencing practices on a regular basis; at the case-specific stage , having far more robust substantive appellate review of sentences, having more robust mechanisms for parole and judicial reconsideration and clemency, and even developing more creative means to apply and revise different forms of punishment as time passes and new information is gathered.

This Issue of FSR explores a range of perspectives on the import and impact of the First Step Act as we approach the first anniversary of President Trump signing it into law. Key themes that emerge from materials in this Issue include the need for effective implementation of the Act and the idea that the Act provides just a start on needed federal criminal justice reforms. The clear takeaway is that there is still much work to do both in advocating for the next pieces of federal criminal justice legislation and in seeking to better administer existing laws. But, as we reach a notable first anniversary for the First Step Act, all should be sure to take time to celebrate a year of real progress, no matter how much further one believes we need to go.

Ten years after the Supreme Court issued its Blakely decision, American sentencing law and policy feel very different. In 2004, many believed modern sentencing systems were destined always to be on a legislatively driven, inexorable march to ever-greater severity. A decade later, sentencing remains the center of a vigorous debate about what we want from our criminal justice system and even who we are as a society, but the terms of the debate now largely revolve around how much to lower prison terms rather than how much to raise them. This essay highlights the continued constitutional fallout from Blakely , and the current policy debates that have come to define modern sentencing systems.