On June 9, 2016, the Sentencing Commission published a notice of proposed priorities for 2017, which can be read here, and invited public comment. FAMM responded to the notice with a letter expressing our assessment of the proposals. You can find other comments on the proposals here.

The Sentencing Commission announced its adopted or final priorities on August 18, 2016. You can read them here.

On December 19, 2016, the Commission published notice of an Issue for Comment regarding synthetic drugs.  It also published a set of proposed guidelines for public comment.

FAMM commented at length on February 20, 2017 on several of the key proposals, especially on alternatives to incarceration for first offenders.  You can read letters from others, here. A second round of comments, called reply comments, were published on March 10, 2017. You can read them here.

The Commission held a public hearing on April 18, 2017 on synthetic drugs and court alternative to incarceration programs. You can read testimony and watch the hearing here.

The Commission ultimately did not adopt any proposed guidelines due to the fact that it did not have a quorum of four commissioners until very late in the amendment cycle, it was not able to give the proposed guidelines and public comment on them sufficient attention. You can read Acting Chair Pryor’s statement regarding the situation here.

Consequently, there were no guideline amendments in 2017.