Published on: Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Today, the United States Sentencing Commission published its 2022 Annual Report and Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics

Here are some Fiscal Year 2022 Data Highlights:

  • In FY 2022, the courts reported 64,142 felony and Class A misdemeanor cases to the Commission. This represents an increase of 6,855 cases from FY 2021.
  • The race of federal offenders remained largely unchanged from prior years. In FY 2022, 47.4 percent of all offenders were Hispanic, 25.2 percent were Black, 23.0 percent were White, and 4.4 percent were of another race.
  • Non-U.S. citizens accounted for 31.2 percent of all offenders, a decrease of 2.4 percentage points from the prior year.
  • Drug offenses accounted for the largest single group of offenses in FY 2022, comprising 31.5 percent of all reported cases. Immigration cases accounted for the next largest group, at 27.5 percent. Cases involving firearms and fraud, respectively, were the next most common types of offenses after immigration cases. Together these four types of offenses accounted for 82.1 percent of all cases reported to the Commission in FY 2022.
  • Among drug cases, offenses involving methamphetamine were most common, accounting for 48.5 percent of all drug cases. The portion of drug cases involving fentanyl increased markedly over the last year, such that fentanyl cases were the third most common among all drug cases.
  • The average length of imprisonment in methamphetamine cases was 94 months, an increase of four months from FY 2021. However, the average sentence imposed varied across the other major drug types: in crack cocaine cases (70 months), powder cocaine cases (68 months), fentanyl cases (65 months), heroin cases (66 months), and marijuana cases (33 months).
  • In FY 2022, 64.7 percent of drug offenders were convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, compared to 67.7 percent of drug offenders in FY 2021.
  • In FY 2022, 67.8 percent of all offenders received sentences under the Guidelines Manual, in that the sentence was within the applicable guideline range or was outside the applicable guideline range and the court cited a departure reason from the Guidelines Manual. Of all sentences, 41.9 percent were within the guideline range, compared to 42.8 percent in FY 2021.