---
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).