| --- |
| license: other |
| task_categories: |
| - tabular-classification |
| - tabular-regression |
| tags: |
| - sentencing |
| - criminal-justice |
| - federal-courts |
| - ussc |
| - duckdb |
| - datapond |
| pretty_name: U.S. Sentencing Commission Individual Offender Database (FY2002-FY2025) |
| size_categories: |
| - 10M<n<100M |
| --- |
| |
| # USSC Federal Sentencing Database |
|
|
| Every federal defendant sentenced from FY2002 through FY2025 (1.72M), from the U.S. |
| Sentencing Commission's public individual offender datafiles: demographics, offense |
| of conviction, guideline calculations, sentence imposed, departures and variances. |
| The Commission's ~22,000-variable fixed-width layout is reshaped into a wide |
| `sentences` table plus long tables per count of conviction, guideline computation, |
| drug type and departure reason. |
| **13,962,089 rows across 9 tables.** |
|
|
| | Table | Description | Row Count | Column Count | |
| |---|---|---|---| |
| | `new_statutes` | Statutes of conviction as recorded in NWSTAT slots | 3,279,305 | 4 | |
| | `departure_reasons` | One row per stated reason for departure/variance: REAS code + RETEXT text (FY2004+, post-Booker coding) or REASON + REASTXT (FY2002-03, pre-Booker coding) | 2,637,999 | 7 | |
| | `counts` | One row per count of conviction: statute (TTSC1/TTSC2/TTSC3 = title/section/subsection), statutory minimum/maximum (SMIN/SMAX) and STA1-3 | 2,412,926 | 11 | |
| | `sentences` | One row per federal defendant sentenced in the fiscal year: demographics, offense, guideline range, sentence imposed, departures (scalar variables of the USSC individual offender datafile) | 1,720,684 | 1610 | |
| | `guidelines` | One row per guideline computation on the case: base offense level, specific offense characteristics and Chapter 3 adjustments (ADJ_*), per-guideline totals | 1,706,580 | 348 | |
| | `drugs` | One row per drug type involved: type, weight, units, equivalency (DRUGTYP, WGT, UNIT, MWGT, DRGAM, ...) | 749,098 | 14 | |
| | `pleas` | One row per plea/verdict slot (INPLEA, INNOPL) | 738,024 | 5 | |
| | `offense_dates` | Offense begin/end dates per slot (OFBEG/OFEND; FY2002-era files only) | 501,590 | 5 | |
| | `chapter_text` | Free-text chapter 2/3/4 guideline notes (CHP2TXT/CHP3TXT/CHP4TXT) and change flags | 215,883 | 9 | |
|
|
| ## Query it remotely |
|
|
| ```sql |
| INSTALL httpfs; LOAD httpfs; |
| ATTACH 'https://huggingface.co/datasets/Nason/ussc-database/resolve/main/ussc.duckdb' AS ussc (READ_ONLY); |
| |
| SELECT fiscal_year, COUNT(*) AS defendants, |
| ROUND(100.0 * COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE prison_imposed) / COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE prison_imposed IS NOT NULL), 1) AS pct_prison_imposed, |
| ROUND(AVG(prison_months) FILTER (WHERE term_type = 'months'), 1) AS mean_months_when_term_stated, |
| COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE term_type = 'life') AS life |
| FROM ussc.v_sentence_terms GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1; |
| -- TOTPRISN alone is neither averageable (9992/9996/9997/9998 are codes) nor a prison |
| -- indicator (0 = no prison OR under one month); the view separates both. |
| ``` |
|
|
| Or with the datapond packages: `pip install datapond` / `pak::pak("datapond-db/datapond-r")`. |
|
|
| Build pipeline, the USSC codebook and caveats: https://github.com/ian-nason/ussc-database |
| Source: https://www.ussc.gov/research/datafiles/commission-datafiles (public domain). |
|
|
