Bowman on The Sentencing Commission's Economic Crime Project

Frank O. Bowman III (University of Missouri School of Law) has posted Damp Squib: The Disappointing Denouement of the Sentencing Commission's Economic Crime Project (And What They Should Do Now) (27 Federal Sentencing Reporter 270 (June 2015)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In early 2015, the U.S. Sentencing Commission culminated a multi-year study of the federal economic crime guidelines by promulgating a number of guidelines amendments to take effect on November 1, 2015.

Though adopted with the best intentions, these amendments fail to address adequately the principal complaints made over the past decade or so about federal economic crime sentencing. In particular, the Commission failed to take seriously the very real problem of excessive guideline ranges for high-loss economic crime defendants.

This article, which builds on testimony I gave to the Sentencing Commission in February 2015, (a) describes the historical roots and current causes of the high-end distortion of the fraud guidelines, (b) demonstrates that the 2015 amendments fail to solve or even materially ease the problem, and (c) make some concrete suggestions for bringing the guidelines for high-loss offenders into the sphere of practical utility.