ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes only a few cases, the existence of The Prosecution Project allows for the immediate ability to test theories against a larger sample and gain a better understanding of their generalizability. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSG), which will hereafter be referred to as the FSGs, are provided by the United States (US) government to suggest recommended sentence lengths based on the severity of the crime and defendant’s previous criminal history in an effort to standardize sentencing. The US government first introduced the FSGs in 19874 and the Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of their creation in 1989. In general, sentencing guidelines largely utilize the severity of the offense and the defendant’s criminal history to determine sentence length. Criminology scholars Engen and Gainey address these factors through using statistical modeling to analyze sentence length, utilizing the variables prescribed in sentencing guidelines.
