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NUMBERS TELL TALE OF TWO SENTENCING REDUCTION MOTIONS

The U.S. Sentencing Commission released data last week on both its criminal history reduction decision and the 18 USC § 3582(c)(1)(A) compassionate release sentence reduction motions.

Both datasets are current through June 30, 2026.

The number of prisoners filing compassionate release motions every month, let alone getting grants. continues to fall and is slight compared to the overall federal prison population. For the last quarter, 497 motions were filed, only 70% of the number filed during the same time last year, and only about half the number filed in April through June 2023.

When it comes to the number granted, the news is both good and bad. The data show that about 13% were granted last quarter, a pretty slight number. The grant rate, however, is pretty much unchanged from 2025 (13%, 2024 (14%) and 2023 (12%).

The numbers do not account for the negative effect of the Supreme Court’s Rutherford and Fernandez decisions (May 2026), which denied prisoners filing compassionate release motions the right to rely on disparate sentences resulting from intervening law changes. The data suggest that the Rutherford/Fernandez effect could reduce grants to around 10%.

Writing in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog last week, Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman bemoaned the very limited effect compassionate release has on the overall prison population: “With a federal prison population over 150,000, this means only slightly more than an average of 1 out of every 10,000 federal prisoners are securing a § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) reduction each month. That’s not a lot of compassion. And, with roughly 4,500 persons being sentenced to federal prison each month, roughly 250 new persons are being sent to federal prison each month for every single federal prisoner securing a sentence reduction.”

In February 2024, the Commission made its change in the criminal history guidelines retroactive. The data show that more than 10,000 federal prisoners have reduced their sentences by about 12 months on average. About 6,000 of those changes were based on the status point amendment (eliminating extra criminal history points if the defendant was on parole, probation or supervised release), and around 4,000 were based on the zero-point offender amendment. Berman said, “Those 10,000 (modest) sentence reductions based on retroactive criminal history amendments granted since February 2024 amount to roughly 10 times as many sentence reductions as have been granted based on compassionate release motion (though the average compassionate release reduction is likely greater).”

U.S. Sentencing Commission, Compassionate Release Data Report (through June 30, 2026)

U.S. Sentencing Commission, Retroactivity Analyses And Data Reports (through June 30, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root