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Steering committee update: commission confirms standard grid, flags true-zero and sets June/July deadlines
Summary
A steering-committee update recommended retaining the standard grid, exploring treatment of true-zero cases, and set submission deadlines for the commission's June/July rulemaking cycle.
A brief steering-committee update at the May 8 meeting outlined near-term process work and preliminary policy directions for the Sentencing Guidelines Commission.
The committee reported it does not recommend wholesale changes to the standard grid at this time but wants further work on how to treat true-zero cases — defendants with no prior relevant felony history who nonetheless face the grid’s presumptive outcomes. The committee suggested possible mitigating factors or explicit ranges for dispositional and durational departures to better capture that population.
The committee also proposed treating custody status as a separate column (rather than part of criminal-history score) so that custody can add an incremental amount of time without automatically moving a defendant across the disposition line. Commissioners discussed ranges for the shaded areas of the grid rather than fixed numbers.
Staff emphasized schedule constraints: the commission must act on preliminary rankings at the June meeting (June 5, 1:00 p.m.), post them for a public hearing and then hold a final July meeting to adopt any changes. For offense-group 3 work, staff requested draft submissions by Friday, June 16 (or June 18 if work occurs the weekend prior) so staff can begin analysis the week of June 19.
Ending: Commissioners were asked to RSVP for the June session and to prioritize submitting ranking feedback on schedule to meet rulemaking posting deadlines.
