Big new US Sentencing Commission report on federal supervised release

I was intrigued and pleased to come across on the US Sentencing Commission's website this long new report from the USSC titled simply "Federal Offenders Sentenced to Supervised Release." Here is an excerpts from the report's introduction and conclusion:

This report addresses the legal framework and most common legal issues that arise in regard to supervised release and analyzes data concerning the imposition, modification, and revocation of supervised release terms.

In 1984, as part of the Sentencing Reform Act (“SRA”) that created the federal sentencing guidelines system, Congress prospectively eliminated parole and established supervised release.  Supervised release is a “unique” type of post-confinement monitoring that is overseen by federal district courts with the assistance of federal probation officers, rather than by the United States Parole Commission.  A sentencing court is authorized (and, in some cases, required) to impose a term of supervised release in addition to a term of imprisonment. While on supervised release after reentry into the community following release from imprisonment, an offender is required to abide by certain conditions, some mandated by statute and others imposed at the court’s discretion.  If an offender violates a condition, a court is authorized (and, in some cases, required) to “revoke a term of supervised release, and require the defendant to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release without credit for time previously served on post[-]release supervision.”...

With nearly one million federal offenders having been sentenced to supervised release since the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act (including more than 100,000 offenders currently on supervised release) and with revocations occurring in approximately one-third of cases in which supervised release terms were imposed, issues concerning the imposition and revocation of such terms arise frequently.  This report has addressed a wide variety of legal and data issues concerning supervised release.  The federal courts of appeals have taken divergent positions on many of the legal issues....

Courts’ close adherence to the guidelines’ provisions concerning the imposition of supervised release has been consistent for most of the major offense types (drug-trafficking, firearms, immigration, and fraud/larceny cases) and also has been consistent across the criminal history categories.  Data concerning the termination and revocation of supervised release terms are informative concerning whether such uniformity across offense types and criminal history categories has been warranted. In particular, the percentage of successful terminations of supervision for certain offense types (e.g., drug cases) has been significantly higher than for other offense types (e.g., firearms cases).  Furthermore, success rates in supervision are highly correlated with offenders’ criminal history categories at the time of the original sentencing.  On average, the lower the criminal history category an offender has, the greater likelihood that the offender successfully will complete supervision without revocation for violation of the conditions of supervision.

Kudos to the USSC for producing this impressive report on federal supervised release law and practice, and kudos to any reader who uses the comments to spotlight any especially significant or surprising aspect of the report.