“As part of the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recent policy priority work on alternative sentencing, the Commission today published a qualitative analysis of emerging federal alternative-to-incarceration court programs.
“The report summarizes current federal programs and highlights several legal and social science issues relating to them. The analysis is qualitative rather than quantitative at this juncture because of a lack of available empirical data about the programs.
“The publication concludes with questions about the federal court programs that policymakers and courts should consider in deciding whether, and if so how, such programs should operate in the federal criminal justice system in the future.”