United States Sentencing Commission

This document provides certain information considered by the Commission as part of its determination to amend the guideines to eliminate the consideration of "recency" points provided in USSG §4A1.1(e). That amendment, amendment number 5, currently is pending before Congress as part of the package of amendments submitted to Congress on April 29, 2010. The amendment has a specified effective date of November 1, 2010. (August 2010)

The third release in the Research Series on the Recidivism of Federal Offenders describes the empirical foundations of the guidelines' Chapter Four Criminal History Category and its links to the Salient Factor Score risk prediction instrument developed by the U.S. Parole Commission. The report documents the comparative recidivism predictive power of both measures, both for their individual component elements, and for their total formulations. The analysis measures the predictive power of hypothetical reformulations of the Criminal History Category, reporting a suggested impact of age and first offender elements upon guideline recidivism prediction. (January 4, 2005)

The first release in the Research Series on the Recidivism of Federal Offenders, this report examines in detail the predictive statistical power of the Chapter Four Criminal History guidelines. The study uses pre-conviction and instant offense information for a sample of guideline federal offenders sentenced in fiscal year 1992, matched with their post-sentencing criminal behavior collected from FBI records. Both tabular and statistical models of recidivism outcomes report findings by criminal history category and point groupings, as well as by offender demographics, instant offense characteristics, and recidivating offense types. (May 2004)