How the Federal Comparison Data Was Built

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Updated November 2, 2026

The posts in the Federal Prosecution Analysis series compare federal criminal cases with courts-martial. This page explains where the numbers come from, how they were checked, how a federal offense is matched with a UCMJ article, and what the posts do not compare. The background on how military sentencing has moved toward the federal model is in Military Moves Toward Sentencing Guidelines to Mirror the Federal System.

The Two Federal Sources

The first source is the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Individual Offender Datafiles for fiscal years 2016 to 2025. They hold one record for each person convicted and sentenced in a federal district court: 659,036 people over the ten years. Each record shows the primary sentencing guideline, the statutes of conviction, whether the person pleaded guilty or was convicted at trial, the prison term, any mandatory minimum, the position of the sentence against the guideline range, supervised release, fines, and restitution. Fiscal years 2016 and 2017 use the Commission's supplemental files, which apply the method the Commission has used since fiscal year 2018, so offense types and sentence lengths are counted the same way in all ten years.

The sentencing data counts only people who were sentenced. It has no acquittals and no dismissals. For those, the posts use a second source: the Federal Judicial Center's Integrated Database of criminal defendants. It holds one record for each defendant whose case ended in a fiscal year, including dismissals, acquittals, and guilty pleas. For fiscal years 2016 to 2025 it counts 753,808 defendants, 16,849 of whom went to trial. Defendants are counted the way the federal courts count them in their annual Table D-4, which leaves out transfers between districts.

Names, docket numbers, and judge codes were never extracted from either source. No person is identified in any post.

The Court-Martial Source

The military numbers come from this site's Military Trial Results data (updated November 2, 2026), built from the services' public court-martial results. For the comparisons, the posts use trials dated 2016 to 2025, the same years as the federal data. The records cover the Air Force from 2016, the Navy for all of those years, the Marine Corps from 2017, and the Army from 2020. Air Force records rarely list the charges when a case ends in acquittal, so no post gives an Air Force acquittal rate for a single offense. Air Force plea information is missing for most trials before 2020, and Navy and Marine Corps records usually do not show whether a judge or members decided guilt. How that data was built is explained in How the Military Trial Results Data Was Built.

How the Federal Data Was Checked

Before any post was written, 443 figures published by the Sentencing Commission (its annual Sourcebook tables on cases, guilty pleas, sentence length, and sentences relative to the guideline range) and by the federal courts (Table D-4 on how defendants' cases ended, fiscal years 2020 to 2024) were recomputed from the files. All 443 matched exactly. Every number in every post is computed from the files when the post is built, and a checker confirms that each number in the text appears in that post's computed facts.

How Offenses Are Matched

A federal case and a court-martial are compared only where the conduct is the same or close. Each match was reviewed and approved before publication. The federal side is chosen by the primary sentencing guideline (for example, §2G2.2 for possessing, receiving, or distributing child pornography) or by the statute of conviction (for example, 21 U.S.C. 844 for simple drug possession). Case-ending data is chosen by the most serious charge at the end of the case. Some examples:

• Article 134 child pornography (images of child exploitation) is matched with guideline §2G2.2 and, for production, §2G2.1.
• Article 120 is matched only with federal sexual abuse cases whose statute of conviction shows an adult victim. Cases with a child-victim statute go with Article 120b, and cases whose statute shows neither are left out and counted.
• Article 112a is split into possession, distribution, and use. Federal law has no crime of drug use, so use is compared with simple possession, the nearest federal charge, and the post says the match is not exact.
• Article 121 larceny is matched with all federal theft and fraud under guideline §2B1.1, split by dollar loss. The court-martial records rarely show a dollar value, so only the federal side is split.

A post is published only when it has at least 10 cases on each side of a comparison (on the federal side for federal-only posts) and enough real findings for at least 450 words. A topic that falls short is merged into a broader post or held. Where a federal guideline has no close court-martial counterpart, the post reports the federal numbers on their own.

What Is Not Compared

Purely military offenses, such as absence without leave, disobeying orders, and disrespect, have no civilian counterpart and are never compared. The posts report nothing about the age, sex, race, ethnicity, citizenship, or education of anyone. They name no judge, lawyer, defendant, or accused. They report what the records show, not why, and they are not legal advice.

Limits Every Reader Should Know

The two systems count different events. Federal sentencing numbers are by the fiscal year of sentencing, case-ending numbers by the fiscal year the case ended, and court-martial numbers by trial date. None of the sources has offense dates. Federal prison terms are the terms imposed, with life counted as 470 months; court-martial confinement is as adjudged at trial. A court-martial sentence can include a punitive discharge, reduction in rank, and forfeiture of pay, which have no federal counterpart, and a federal sentence can include supervised release, which a court-martial cannot impose. Each post carries the specific cautions that apply to it.

About the author. Jocelyn C. Stewart is a retired Army JAG with more than 24 years of trying courts-martial and more than 200 jury trials. She hosts Where All The Bodies Are Buried and runs the Law Office of Jocelyn C. Stewart. This analysis is for education and information only. It is not legal advice, and every case is different.