Today, the United States Sentencing Commissed published a new report titled Path of Federal Criminality: Mobility and Criminal History. In this study, the Commission examines the geographic mobility of federal offenders. "[M]obility is defined as having convictions in multiple states, including the location of the conviction for the instant offense." The reports providies information on: (1) how mobile federal offenders are, as measured by the number of offenders with convictions in multiple states; (2) the proportion of offenders with convictions in states other than the state of federal convictoin; and (3) the degree to which out of state convictions contributed to criminal history score. Key findings of the report include:
- Almost one-third (30.0%) of the total federal offender population in fiscal year (FY) 2018 had convictions in more than one state.
- The mobility of federal offenders varies by offender characteristics:
- Immigration offenders were the most likely to have convictions in more than one state (38.7%), while child pornography offenders were the least likely (16.4%) to have convictions in more than one state.
- Just under one-third (31.8%) of male offenders had convictions in two or more states compared to 17.8 percent of female offenders.
- Hispanic offenders (31.0%) were the most likely to have convictions in more than one state, closely followed by White (29.3%), Black (28.5%) and Other race (27.8%) offenders.
- The percentage of offenders having convictions in states other than the state of their instant offense varied from a high of 59.2 percent in North Dakota to a low of 10.5 percent in the territory of Puerto Rico.
- A total of 13,904 FY 2018 offenders had out-of-state convictions that received criminal history points. Almost three-quarters of these offenders (73.9%) had a higher Criminal History Category due to these convictions.
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