Federal courts rely on information contained in pre-sentence investigations to determine sentence length. However, defendants do not have access to this prior to entering a plea. Thus many offenders have received sentences longer than what was anticipated during plea negotiations. The authors surveyed chief federal probation officers (n = 96) to measure the feasibility of pre-plea reports being prepared. The 68% response rate provided strong indication of practices and attitudes. Despite the increased work associated with such a system, some support does exist for the concept. Further, most respondents acknowledged that such a system would be beneficial to defendants.
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