The Sentencing Guidelines Commission met in a special workshop on Nov. 20, 2025, to review draft legislative recommendations staff will carry into the commission’s December meeting and the January final report. Chair Mitchell said the session was a workshop and "No action will be taken on these items."

Staff presented a package of proposed changes that would reorder several assault and impaired‑driving offenses on the sentencing grid and adjust statutory maximums in places where the grid and current statute diverge. Director Reitz told commissioners the package includes a new, more serious first‑degree assault tier for intentionally inflicting great bodily harm and adjustments across several assault categories to better reflect seriousness and to harmonize sentencing outcomes.

Director Reitz also summarized an impact analysis of the full package. "Recall that that was gonna be a savings of about 875 beds eventually, that that would offset 41 of those beds," he said, and concluded "the bed savings would be only 834, net prison beds avoided eventually." That reduction reflects the creation of a severity‑9 tier that will re‑classify roughly two‑thirds of current first‑degree assault cases to the higher severity level, based on a year’s worth of complaints staff reviewed.

Key recommendations reviewed included: (1) clarifying submission of sentencing worksheets from pre‑sentence investigation reports so the Commission’s dataset accurately captures life sentences (staff noted an earlier omission of the offense of first‑degree murder of an unborn child from the Commission’s tracking), (2) creating a new severity‑9 first‑degree assault for intentionally inflicting great bodily harm while reducing the statutory maximum for non‑intent first‑degree assault, (3) increasing the statutory maximum for domestic assault by strangulation from 3 to 5 years to align with an intended severity increase, and (4) assigning a uniform 3‑year statutory maximum for felony fourth‑degree assault categories so grid rankings better match statutory caps.

Commissioners asked staff to incorporate background citations and case history where helpful (for example, State v. Black and State v. Dorn were suggested as context for historical interpretation) and to remove or clarify internal footnotes that are not intended as legislative text. Several members commended staff for the volume of work and asked for the draft language to be framed for the legislature as recommendations rather than final statutory text.

The commission voted earlier in the meeting to approve the agenda; that procedural motion passed by roll call (eight yes, zero no). Chair Mitchell adjourned the workshop and said the commission would reconvene at 2:00 p.m. for the public hearing.