2016 Sentencing Commission Statistical Report Available

Sentencing nerds rejoice. The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission released its annual statistical report last week. The report is available here. This year’s report covers data from fiscal year 2014/15. At this point, most of the data cover offenses that are fully within the post–Justice Reinvestment universe. That is, we are mostly looking at sentences for offenses committed on or after December 1, 2011, that include post-release supervision for all felonies and substantial limits on revocation of probation. Most data in the report are very similar to previous years. Here are some of the highlights: As usual, a full quarter of all felony sentences imposed come just from two cells on the sentencing grid: Class H/Level I and Class H/Level II. 83 percent of felony offenders were men (84 percent last report). 48 percent of felony offenders were Black (49 percent last report). The Active/Intermediate/Community breakdown for felons was 38/32/30 percent (39/31/30 last report). I have a longstanding hunch that Community sentences are over-reported, because I think state computers may default to tagging a sentence as Community if it does not include at least one of the six probation conditions that, before December 1, 2011, had to be included in a sentence in order for it to qualify as Intermediate (background here if you don’t remember those days.) The report acknowledges that possible discrepancy on page 12. The presumptive/mitigated/aggravated slash line was 69/27/4, which is almost identical to the 68/28/4 distribution in last year’s report. Habitual felons continue to be sentenced [...]