Opinion ID: 151874
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Offender Characteristics

Text: The category of offender was the Commission's proxy primarily of the need for the sentence to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(C); see also Mogel, 956 F.2d at 1558-59. The Commission categorized offenders almost exclusively by criminal history as determined by prior convictions. [19] See U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1; see also Mogel, 956 F.2d at 1560 (noting that the offender-based component almost entirely relies on the offender's criminal history). The Commission settled on criminal history because it was a workable way to achieve sentencing uniformity. See Stephen Breyer, The Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the Key Compromises upon Which They Rest, 17 Hofstra L.Rev. 1, 19-20 (1988). Criminal history based on convictions could be neatly categorized and taken into account by the Guidelines matrix. The myriad other factors that might help predict recidivism were difficult to categorize and even more difficult to quantifyage, for example, might cut differently in different casesand including them would make the sentencing table unworkable. [20] See id.