Publisher's Synopsis
In 1998 the District of Columbia Sentencing Commission ("the Commission") was charged with developing a comprehensive structured sentencing system for the District or explaining why no such system was needed. After examining the system then in effect, the Commission concluded that the District could benefit from a comprehensive structured sentencing system. Thereafter, the Commission embarked upon the difficult task of creating workable sentencing guidelines for felonies. Following the lead of other jurisdictions and an earlier effort in the District, the Commission developed two Grids -- one for drug cases and one for all other cases -- to plot two of the dominant factors in sentencing: the offense of conviction (on the vertical axis) and the criminal history of the offender (on the horizontal axis). At the intersection of these two factors on the Grids, each box contains the sentencing options and prison ranges for that particular combination of the crime of conviction and criminal history of the offender. In general, as the seriousness of the offense and the criminal history of the offender increase, the length of the prison sentences increase and the alternatives to incarceration decrease.
