New sentencing guidelines look like the same sorry mess

I don't know quite what to make of this. The Sentencing Commission, a federal panel that sets guidelines for federal judges who sentence about 63,000 people each year is working on new guidelines for sentencing federal criminals in anticipation that the Supreme Court will strike down a 17-year-old system that has been challenged as unconstitutional.

The DOJ has weighed in with an endorsement for an alternative that sounds worse. Minimum sentences would not change. However, judges would have flexibility to give longer sentences, up to the maximum defined by Congress.

Hard to see how they think that will make things better.