Ten Percent Drop in Federal Sentences of One Year or More

The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during August 2014 the government reported 13,265 new convictions. On these, only 3,706 of the defendants — 28 percent, or just over one in four — were reported to have received prison sentences of one year or more. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the number of defendants receiving prison sentences of at least one year is down 1 percent over the previous month and down 10.4 percent from five years ago.

On the other hand, the total number of criminal convictions has been nearly constant, falling by only 1.0 percent in the same five year period.

The comparisons of the number of defendants convicted are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.

Types of Convictions

Drug prosecutions made up roughly one in three of these federal felony convictions, with an additional one in ten classified as weapons cases. More specifically, the program category "Drugs-Drug Trafficking" accounted for 21.4 percent of prison sentences of one year or more, while "Drugs-Organized Crime Task Force" was recorded for an additional 11.0 percent. Prosecutions classified by the Justice Department as major "Operation Triggerlock" weapons cases comprised 11.0 percent.

Immigration felony convictions with sentences of at least one year made up one in five (20.4%) of these convictions. [Note that if sentence length is ignored, immigration convictions made up a dramatically higher proportion — nearly two out of three (65.9%) — of all federal convictions during August. This ratio falls to one out of five for those sentenced to one year or more because so many immigration sentences involve little or no prison time.]

Top Ranked Judicial Districts

Relative to its population, New Mexico led the nation with the largest number of these federal felony convictions. That district recorded 6,214 prison sentences of at least one year — more than four times the national average of 1,414 such prison sentences per ten million population in the United States as a whole. As shown in Table 1, a year ago New Mexico had ranked fourteenth in the nation on this measure.

Judicial District	Per Capita	Count	Rank	1 yr ago	5 yrs ago
N Mexico	6,214	108	1	14	7
Cal, S	5,259	147	2	3	3
Texas, W	4,843	266	3	2	2
Arizona	4,560	249	4	4	4
Texas, S	4,540	337	5	1	1
N Dakota	4,460	26	6	72	80
Ga, S	3,664	47	7	52	52
Ala, S	3,595	25	8	70	51
Ken, E	3,253	59	9	40	34
W Virg, N	3,240	25	10	62	49

Table 1. Top Ten Districts
(per Ten Million People)

Five additional districts were recorded with more than three times the national average (relative to their population sizes) of defendants sentenced to prison terms of at least one year. Among these the Southern District of California (San Diego) was ranked in second place after New Mexico, while the Western District of Texas (San Antonio) was ranked third. Arizona was fourth, followed by the Southern District of Texas (Houston) in fifth place.

North Dakota was the only other district with more than three times the national average of defendants relative to its population who were convicted and sentenced to one year or more of prison time. It was also the highest ranking district that was not located along the southwest border with Mexico. The remaining four districts in the top ten all had more than twice the national average of convictions of this type relative to their population size (see Table 1).

The federal judicial district which showed the greatest growth in the rate of prison sentences of one year or more compared to one year ago — 52.3 percent — was the Eastern District of Kentucky (Lexington). Compared to five years ago, the district with the largest growth — 28 percent — was North Dakota.

In the last year, the judicial District Court recording the largest drop in the rate of prison sentences of one year or more — 5.6 percent — was the Southern District of California (San Diego). But over the past five years, the Southern District of Alabama (Mobile) showed the largest drop — 27.1 percent.

Top Ranked District Judges

At any one time, there are almost 900 regular and senior federal District Court judges handling these cases in the United States. Seven out of ten of the federal judges recorded as sentencing the most defendants to at least one year in prison in August[1] were from the Southern and Western Districts of Texas. Judge Robert A. Junell in the Western District of Texas (San Antonio) ranked first with 72 defendants sentenced. Judge Junell appeared in the top ten rankings one year ago (ranked tenth) and five years ago (ranked sixth).

Judge Andrew S. Hanen in the Southern District of Texas (Houston) ranked second with 66 defendants recorded as having been sentenced to prison for one year or more. Judge Hanen appeared in the top ten rankings one year ago (ranked fifth) and five years ago (ranked seventh).

Judge Randy Crane in the Southern District of Texas (Houston) ranked third with 44 defendants recorded with felony sentences of one year or more. Judge Crane appeared in the top ten rankings one year ago (ranked third) and five years ago (ranked fifth).

Judge		Count	Rank	1 yr ago	5 yrs ago
Junell, Robert A.	Texas, W	72	1	10	6
Hanen, Andrew S.	Texas, S	66	2	5	7
Crane, Randy	Texas, S	44	3	3	5
Moses, Alia	Texas, W	43	4	1	-
Hinojosa, Ricardo H.	Texas, S	36	5	2	4
Jorgenson, Cindy K.	Arizona	31	6	6	11
Beaty, James A., Jr.	N Car, M	28	7	112	80
Campbell, David G.	Arizona	27	8	365	144
Kazen, George P.	Texas, S	27	8	9	3
Alvarez, Micaela	Texas, S	27	8	4	2

Table 2. Top Ten Judges

All but one of the "top ten" judges were located in districts that also ranked in the top ten. Judge James A. Beaty, Jr. from the Middle District of North Carolina (Greensboro) was the lone exception. Ranked seventh, he had an unusually large number of defendants who were sentenced to more than one year during August 2014, as recorded by the Justice Department.

The other federal judges recorded as sentencing the largest number of defendants to prison terms of one year or more during August 2014 are shown in Table 2.

^[1]These figures reflect those defendants recorded as sentenced during August 2014 by Justice Department attorneys. Because of delays in recording, sometimes actual sentencing may have occurred earlier.