[{"_1":2,"_87":-5,"_88":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_26":27},"root",{"_5":6,"_17":10,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":10,"_23":-5,"_24":-5,"_25":10},"user",{"_7":8,"_9":10,"_11":10,"_12":-5,"_13":-5,"_14":15,"_16":-5},"roles",[],"isAuthenticated",false,"isPremium","planName","subscriptionStatus","featureFlags",{},"insightsBudget","isDevelopmentHost","userPreferences",{},"recaptchaSiteKey","6LcvOJcUAAAAAHsB-gPGfGktcRlKpH7OTIU_dMTD","isImpersonating","impersonation","affiliateStatus","isFreedomPortal","routes/v2/article/layout",{"_28":29,"_30":31},"notFound",true,"relatedArticles",[32,75],{"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":46,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":52,"_53":54,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":60,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":66,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":72,"_74":72},"mediaId",6694087,"mediaKeyId","2214826-ed3b478900eb5cc3e722352735c5f4e3","parentId",2214826,"title","D.C. Sentencing Commission reports 50% rise in felony counts; cites data-access and IT limits","audioSeconds",3457,"startMs",321000,"endMs",3778000,"viewUrl","/Search/View?dp=1&key=2214826-ed3b478900eb5cc3e722352735c5f4e3&start=321&end=3778","thumbnailUrl","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2214826-ed3b478900eb5cc3e722352735c5f4e3/thumbnail_321000.jpg","articleUrl","/articles/6694087/DC-Sentencing-Commission-reports-50-rise-in-felony-counts-cites-data-access-and-IT-limits","mediaUrl","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6694087-2c9dff396e621e1f8d786d28c68cabf8/orig.mp4?Expires=1774896504&Signature=XwtdByB5kBlWCUD4sJbvjwTVSIuqOyv~wiM3MhPLUIDAr1p~dqTxNM6AB85CuM9HdeV9qB0rPR079MaWUaNiwGUt9Y5xFeXlcUcyylo62tTuwCy7-AmKu1rRVpxjRzUUkpH36w5ZxqYx6joRL1LjXexHckwcOOUFoaFJep1SkYsmnA5qVCiG0-FLPIKgswgggxsUQZoIJuzPyX6ht0Nq~3VK6CISEa8tjhq7TC-whkxnpnw2HHfvecqAh~-Mss6s5-573kNiTQfjV9HuL013-51k2x86hLHxtjoqcZosBricMEycpRg1uMU8u-Z0Zk5KbN3drZ5psQEXSLB33AXUjw__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","author","District of Columbia (Judiciary and Public Safety)","date","2025-02-03T00:00:00Z","article","The D.C. Sentencing Commission told the Council’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety on Feb. 3 that felony counts sentenced in Superior Court rose about 50% in 2024 and that the commission faces continuing barriers to full data access and modern IT capacity.

The commission’s executive director, Lyndon Frey, gave the update at a public oversight hearing chaired by Councilmember Brooke Pinto. Frey said the total number of counts sentenced increased by 50% in 2024 and that cases and individuals sentenced rose by about 47%. He told the committee those figures were “a fairly dramatic increase.”

That trend came with a high level of compliance with the commission’s voluntary guidelines: 98.4% of felony counts complied with the guidelines in 2024, and 95.5% of counts were sentenced within the recommended ranges, Frey said.

Why it matters: sentencing trends and how offenses are ranked influence judges’ options and public-safety policy. Committee members pressed the commission on new offenses from the Secure DC legislation, how those offenses were ranked on the commission’s grid and what data limitations mean for future rulemaking and analysis.

Frey said the commission ranked 22 new offenses and enhancements from Secure DC last year and that that process now sometimes begins while the Council is still considering legislation so the commission can act more quickly once statutes take effect. He described the commission’s method: using a new offense’s statutory maximum punishment as a starting point for its default ranking because “the statutory maximum punishment [is] set for the offense by the Council.”

The committee and commission discussed the ranking of one Secure DC offense, unlawful discharge of a firearm. Frey said that offense received a lower ranking chiefly because the statutory maximum for the offense is two years, and the commission uses statutory maximums to determine which guideline boxes make legal sentencing options available. “The primary factor for unlawful discharge of a firearm … was because it has a statutory maximum of no more than two years,” Frey said.

Frey also reviewed 2024 case-disposition trends. He said 92% of sentencings resulted from plea agreements and that Rule 11(c)(1)(C) pleas — agreements specifying a particular sentence or range — fell to 6.2% of felony cases, a 25% drop from 2023 and a 40% drop from 2022. At the case level, prison sentences remained the most common outcome: 62% of felony cases received a prison sentence in 2024.

The commission emphasized steps taken to strengthen data and policy work. Frey described an internal reorganization that split staff into three teams (data research; legal and sentencing policy; general support) and said staff completed a non‑substantive top‑to‑bottom reorganization of the sentencing guidelines manual to improve clarity and usability. He said staff invested more than 1,000 hours on the restructuring project.

But Frey told the committee the commission faces two persistent obstacles. First, Superior Court’s ongoing Enterprise Justice case-management transition has altered data structures and created uncertainty about how and when the commission will receive court data. Frey said the court is a cooperative partner but that the new system’s implementation is not yet finalized. He told the committee staff will “need to modify our own in‑house data system so that we can continue to receive and analyze data.”

Second, and more limiting for some analyses, the commission does not have access to pre‑sentence report data prepared by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA). Frey said the absence of pre‑sentence reports prevents the commission from reviewing defendants’ criminal histories in a way that would allow analysis of how criminal-history scoring changes would affect guideline recommendations. He said the commission is pursuing access through the Criminal Justice Coordinating Commission (CJCC) and federal partners and noted that obtaining such access could require changes to federal law.

On budget and technology, Frey told the committee the commission is seeking funding to move its servers to the cloud; he estimated a migration would cost about $650,000. He said staff workloads and increasingly complex data requests strain a “very lean” agency: the commission responded to 11 formal data requests in FY 2023, 29 in FY 2024 and five so far in FY 2025.

Committee Chair Brooke Pinto and commission leaders also discussed community engagement. Frey said the commission held more than 180 engagement events over the last year and that staff intend to develop a more formal mechanism to present community feedback to the full commission on a regular basis.

Looking ahead, the commission asked the committee for continued assistance on data access and for support to fund IT improvements. Judge Dania Dason, the commission chairperson and a Superior Court judge, said she was “very honored to now be the chairperson” and praised the commission’s data‑driven approach. Pinto closed the discussion and directed committee staff to continue follow‑up work with the commission and court partners.

No formal votes or motions were taken during the sentencing‑commission portion of the hearing.","mediaType","Video","parentTitle","District of Columbia (Judiciary and Public Safety) - Committee on the Judiciary & Public Safety, Performance Oversight Hearing, Brooke Pinto, Chairperson - Feb 03, 2025","oneSentenceSummary","At a Feb. 3 oversight hearing, the D.C. Sentencing Commission reported a roughly 50% increase in felony counts sentenced in 2024, high voluntary-guideline compliance and persistent data- and technology-related limits that the commission says hinder deeper analysis.","taxTitle","Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, Committees, Legislative, District of Columbia","taxId",15949,"location","","headline","shortSummary",{"_33":76,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":77,"_41":78,"_43":79,"_45":80,"_47":81,"_49":82,"_51":83,"_53":84,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":85,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":86,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":72,"_74":72},6694082,"Criminal Code Reform Commission reports national sentencing analysis, recommends updates including AI 'deepfake' offense",2423,3677000,6100000,"/Search/View?dp=1&key=2214826-ed3b478900eb5cc3e722352735c5f4e3&start=3677&end=6100","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2214826-ed3b478900eb5cc3e722352735c5f4e3/thumbnail_3677000.jpg","/articles/6694082/Criminal-Code-Reform-Commission-reports-national-sentencing-analysis-recommends-updates-including-AI-deepfake-offense","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6694082-4bcbcf8fbd4a1828332e656b727b6310/orig.mp4?Expires=1774896504&Signature=TqgmU2K8FKOBwHkS9qUKuXoBscbNL~lfeyXPdLunGmQGhrHllNj~PVZs9iE8c9Qw5UaJTm97~9VLBPO3nJG~l740YUYFtHV0Qz7DxxbB~XNIkWWmZoNf6BFj6U9svmtD8SFDtNKYW4odLwOvU7WxXdIANskCW9BagR0J6vB0Co0hwk7pdwbfZEtfgL3Un7ngPyREQBmS-DOuvnUN8rV9j8DYE44cWv0U020HIjEU-HXj2kdmHAe5CrjJrfXU4RACnciD~QvzPJ8~5VTp0uZKL4N6zFO59Hlez7cxPv4VJ0KOCQHSlIeDtDdruUjRPNdWseP1aXmdQyhtIoYfqJrLsg__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","The Criminal Code Reform Commission told the Council’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety on Feb. 3 that it completed two large research projects comparing District sentencing practices to national norms and that it is advancing targeted code revisions, including a proposed offense addressing nonconsensual sexually explicit imagery created with artificial intelligence.

Director Park, the commission’s executive director, briefed the committee on the agency’s recent work and submitted written materials and its FY24 annual report for the record. Park told the committee the agency’s work falls into three categories: research and data analysis to respond to critiques of the earlier comprehensive draft code (the RCCA), continuing drafting and recommendations for code revisions, and testimony and feedback on pending Council legislation.

Why it matters: The commission said its surveys and time‑served analysis show that the statutory maximums proposed in the earlier RCCA were largely consistent with national practice and that more accurate national comparisons can help anchor local sentencing policy decisions.

Park described two major research efforts. First, the commission completed a nationwide survey of statutory maximum penalties for selected serious offenses — robbery, armed robbery, carjacking, armed carjacking, burglary and armed burglary — by reviewing state criminal codes, case law and, when necessary, practitioners in other jurisdictions. Second, the commission used the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Corrections Reporting Program (accessed via a secure University of Michigan research environment) to build a detailed comparison of initial sentences and actual time served across states.

“We’ve now produced hundreds of graphs and charts that include detailed sentencing information from across the country,” Park said, adding the analysis included 95th‑percentile comparisons and time‑served measures that are critical because incarceration and parole practices vary across states.

Those findings, Park said, generally supported the RCCA’s approach to statutory maximums: in many states the RCCA maxima were “as long or in almost all cases longer than even the 95th percentile amount of time served for a given state,” she said.

Park told the committee the commission is also continuing to prepare and submit focused code revisions. Examples she highlighted included clarifying public‑corruption provisions (for example, misuse of nonpublic information by an official that resembles insider trading), drafting modernized animal‑cruelty provisions and recommending a new standalone offense to criminalize the nonconsensual distribution of sexually explicit images or videos produced with artificial intelligence. Park said that approach is preferable to relying on older statutes because it more precisely addresses the novel risks that AI tools create.

On the proposed AI‑created imagery offense, Park told the committee the draft includes knowledge and intent elements and narrow exceptions for clearly satirical or artful uses; she said that tailoring is meant to reduce free‑speech risk while addressing the growing harms of nonconsensual distribution: “With the rapid proliferation of more powerful and less costly artificial intelligence tools, we think that the risk of these types of misuses just continues to grow,” Park said.

Park also described the practical hurdles of producing a nationwide analysis. The commission’s research scientist, Margaret Braunschtein, led a time‑consuming process to clean and validate Bureau of Justice Statistics data stored at the University of Michigan, the director said, and the commission continues to check categorizations of state statutes to ensure apples‑to‑apples comparisons.

Park said the commission recognizes political and federal‑oversight constraints on a single, wholesale code rewrite but urged incremental, targeted revisions that can reduce litigation and confusion under the current code. She cited a recent D.C. Court of Appeals en banc reversal in Cardoso v. United States as an example of multi‑year litigation that a clearer statute could avoid; the commission’s proposal would clarify the elements that distinguish fleeting, incidental contact from kidnapping under the code.

On the commission’s near‑term agenda, Park said staff expect to deliver recommendations on anti‑dumping offenses, private‑sector corruption and an evidentiary change related to mental‑state proof that the commission believes could reduce wrongful convictions. Park said those changes are designed to be workable as standalone bills if a full code rewrite is not feasible in the near term.

The committee thanked the commission for the research and report and asked staff to provide the council with interim graphs and methodology details while the commission finishes its more detailed written report and Tableau visualizations. Park said the final methodology and cleaned comparisons will take longer because the commission is verifying state‑level categorizations and working through BJS data constraints.

No formal votes or motions occurred during the CCRC portion of the hearing.","At a Feb. 3 oversight hearing, the Criminal Code Reform Commission said it completed two major research projects — a 50‑state statutory maximum survey and a national sentencing/time‑served analysis using BJS data — and recommended targeted code revisions, including an offense for nonconsensual distribution of sexually explicit AI imagery.","actionData","errors"]

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D.C. Sentencing Commission reports 50% rise in felony counts; cites data-access and IT limits

Criminal Code Reform Commission reports national sentencing analysis, recommends updates including AI 'deepfake' offense