Sentencing “Boat Defendants”: Breaking the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Monopoly on Gathering Data on Federal Sentencing Practices, and Why It Matters

Abstract It is critically important for independent researchers, unaffiliated with sentencing commissions, to conduct vibrant sentencing data collection and rigorous analytical projects to supplement the data collection and research conducted by commissions. Such independent research can fill in blind spots in commission research and provide legislatures, other criminal justice stakeholders, and commissions themselves with a more fulsome understanding of sentencing practice. The boat defendants report in this special issue, authored by Kendra McSweeney, Mat Coleman, and Doug Berman, is just this kind of research. It provides insights not just into a unique group of persons convicted in the federal criminal justice system for controlled substance violations but also into broader issues facing federal sentencing: unwarranted sentencing disparities, unwarranted severity, overreliance on such quantifiable sentencing factors as drug type and quantity, and more. The report exposes some of the otherwise hidden impacts of the Supreme Court’s decision in Booker v. United States, especially the growing unwarranted sentencing disparities that have taken hold within federal judicial districts, and between districts, over the past two decades. It does so in large part by collecting and analyzing judge-specific data that the Commission itself collects but does not release in its publicly available dataset.