Lies, damn lies, and federal sentencing statistics

This new article from New York Newsday, entitled "Federal judges becoming more lenient at sentencing," has me thinking about the famous quote about statistics.  Though I do not think the post-Booker world has been marked by considerable leniency, the Newsday article does seem to its statistics right and it does a reasonable job providing some context for the statistics it highlights.  Here are snippets:

Emboldened by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that undercut the mandatory sentencing guidelines, local federal judges are showing more leniency in sentencing than most others around the nation, according to government data....

Following the Supreme Court ruling, federal judges in the metropolitan area, including those assigned to the court in Central Islip, have dropped below the sentencing guidelines 17.9 percent of the time , from Oct. 1, 2006, to March 31, 2007, the first six months of fiscal 2007, compared with 6.9 percent for federal courts nationwide, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. In the Eastern District, which covers Brooklyn, Nassau, Suffolk and Staten Island, judges dropped below the guidelines 13.2 percent of the time. In the Southern District federal court in Manhattan, judges went below the guidelines in 21.2 percent of the cases....

Despite the apparent rise in leniency from the bench, legal observers said the courts haven't gone wild in forgoing incarceration. In fact, other statistics show that the metropolitan area's federal judges dished out prison terms in about 84 percent of convictions in fiscal 2006....

"I would say flexible, not lenient," was how one Brooklyn federal judge described the sentencing trends in New York City.  The judge, who asked to remain anonymous because he prefers to be quoted in court, said he believed he and fellow jurists were in the best position to decide the correct sentence.