Original Research

Federal Sentencing Lengths by Offense Type

Records show how long federal prison sentences run, by offense type, aggregated from U.S. Sentencing Commission datafiles. Aggregate-only, FY2018–FY2024. Updated daily.

Key Findings

Records show that across 810,538 federal sentencings (FY2018–FY2024), the median prison sentence varies widely by offense type. For immigration offenses, the most common category in the records, the median sentence was 5.6 mo with a middle-50% range of 1.8 mo to 12.6 mo. These are aggregate figures from published federal records, not a prediction for any individual case. How any of this applies to a specific case is a question your attorney decides.

Sentence Length by Offense Type

Records show, in months of imprisonment, the 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile, and mean across 810,538 federal sentencings (FY2018–FY2024). Only offense types with at least 10 sentencings are shown.

Offense Type	25th pct	Median	75th pct	Mean	Sentencings (n)
Immigration	1.8 mo	5.6 mo	12.6 mo	9.3 mo	297,242
Drug Trafficking	35.4 mo	65.5 mo	103.8 mo	88 mo	254,433
Firearms	23.8 mo	41.2 mo	65.5 mo	51 mo	106,857
Fraud/Theft/Embezzlement	1.2 mo	9.1 mo	27.2 mo	20.4 mo	68,617
Child Pornography	60.3 mo	87.5 mo	130.2 mo	113.2 mo	12,769
Robbery	56.6 mo	90 mo	136.3 mo	116.7 mo	11,988
Money Launder	10.1 mo	30.5 mo	68.8 mo	86.2 mo	11,465
Sex Abuse	112.2 mo	179.7 mo	336.5 mo	414.9 mo	10,688
Other	0.2 mo	0.6 mo	2 mo	1.6 mo	9,080
Assault	15.7 mo	37.7 mo	72.1 mo	68.5 mo	5,185
Administration of Justice	0.7 mo	5.1 mo	16.1 mo	16 mo	3,970
Drug Possession	0 mo	1.4 mo	2.2 mo	1.3 mo	2,998
Tax	1.2 mo	7 mo	18.9 mo	13.3 mo	2,900
Prison Offenses	3.5 mo	6.9 mo	11.1 mo	15.9 mo	2,746
Bribery/Corruption	2.3 mo	11 mo	25.8 mo	18.6 mo	2,302
Murder	230.3 mo	509.2 mo	1,379.9 mo	1,648.9 mo	1,969
National Defense	6.6 mo	21 mo	36.2 mo	24.8 mo	1,682
Obscenity/Other Sex Offenses	10.1 mo	16.9 mo	23.6 mo	17.8 mo	1,011
Extortion/Racketeering	9.8 mo	21 mo	36.4 mo	27.6 mo	776
Environmental	0 mo	0.5 mo	2.2 mo	1.7 mo	443
Manslaughter	33.7 mo	59.9 mo	103.3 mo	74.3 mo	314
Forgery/Counter/Copyright	0.7 mo	6 mo	21.4 mo	12.4 mo	258
Burglary/Trespass	1.2 mo	1.7 mo	3.5 mo	3.4 mo	208
Commercialized Vice	1.1 mo	4.1 mo	9.3 mo	9.4 mo	167
Stalking/Harassing	3.5 mo	17.7 mo	41.6 mo	25.1 mo	156
Individual Rights	12.3 mo	29.7 mo	56.1 mo	40 mo	108
Kidnapping	101.9 mo	190.2 mo	1,230.6 mo	872.2 mo	100
Antitrust	0 mo	0 mo	0 mo	2.2 mo	93
Arson	33 mo	41 mo	72 mo	92.5 mo	13

“mo” = months of imprisonment. Source: U.S. Sentencing Commission datafiles.

Methodology

Source: Figures are aggregated from the U.S. Sentencing Commission Individual Offender Datafiles, the federal government’s official record of how every federal sentencing was resolved. The records cover FY2018–FY2024, the fiscal years in which the USSC publishes the offense-classification field used to group these figures.

Aggregation: The underlying data is organized into 13,131 pre-computed buckets by federal district, offense type, fiscal year, and criminal-history category. This page combines those buckets into national figures per offense type, weighting each bucket by its number of sentencings.

Statistical caveat:The 25th-percentile, median, and 75th-percentile figures shown are a weighted average of the percentiles computed within each district-and-year bucket. That is not identical to the percentile of the fully pooled sample, where between-bucket variation is large, the averaged middle range can read tighter than the true pooled range. Treat the columns as “typical” values across districts and years, not as exact pooled percentiles.

Sample size: Only offense types backed by at least 10 sentencings are rendered. The number of sentencings behind each row is shown in the final column so the weight of every figure is visible.

Update frequency: This page pulls live data from the federal sentencing distribution records and revalidates daily.

What This Data Means

Records show that federal sentence lengths differ enormously by offense type, the median for one category can be measured in days while another runs to years. The middle-50% range (the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile columns) shows how much sentences spread out even within a single offense type.

These are historical aggregates from published federal records. They describe what happened across many cases, not what will happen in any one case. Federal sentences turn on the specific guideline range, criminal history, district, the facts, and the judge. Whether and how any of this applies to a particular case is a legal question your attorney decides.

For the federal sentencing guidelines themselves, see the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines Manual.

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This is original research published by ImNotAnAttorney. This is general legal information, not legal advice. We are not attorneys and do not provide legal representation or predict case outcomes. The figures are aggregate historical records from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Any decision about how this information bears on a specific case stays with your attorney.