§2J1.6 Failure to Appear by Defendant: Federal Sentences, Fiscal Year 2018
In fiscal year 2018, all 30 people sentenced under guideline §2J1.6 pleaded guilty and all 30 received a prison term. The median prison term was 12 months, and no fines or restitution were ordered.
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In brief: In fiscal year 2018, all 30 people sentenced under guideline §2J1.6 pleaded guilty and all 30 received a prison term. The median prison term was 12 months, and no fines or restitution were ordered.
This post uses the U.S. Sentencing Commission's records of 30 people sentenced in federal court in fiscal year 2018. Acquittals and dismissals come from a second source, the Federal Judicial Center's records of 753,808 federal defendants whose cases ended in fiscal years 2016 to 2025. It is part of the Federal Prosecution Analysis series, which builds on Military Moves Toward Sentencing Guidelines to Mirror the Federal System. How the numbers were built: How the Federal Comparison Data Was Built.
All 30 Pleaded Guilty and All 30 Went to Prison
In fiscal year 2018, the U.S. Sentencing Commission counted 30 people whose primary guideline was §2J1.6, "Failure to Appear by Defendant." All 30 (100%) pleaded guilty, and none was convicted after a trial. All 30 (100%) were sentenced to prison.
No mandatory minimum prison term applied to any of the 30. No one received probation only. In this group, the plea and prison figures are the same for everyone, so the differences among cases show up mainly in the length of the prison term, the range position, and the plea agreement.
Prison Term Lengths
The median prison term was 12 months. A quarter received 17.5 months or more, and a quarter received 6.8 months or less.
The median was 13.5 months in 2017 and 13.7 months in 2019. It was 12 months across all years for this guideline. The table shows each year.
| Fiscal year | People sentenced | Median prison | Pleaded guilty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 41 | 12 months | 83% |
| 2017 | 40 | 13.5 months | 98% |
| 2018 | 30 | 12 months | 100% |
| 2019 | 34 | 13.7 months | 94% |
| 2020 | 24 | 15 months | 92% |
| 2021 | 24 | 13.5 months | 100% |
| 2022 | 27 | 10 months | 96% |
| 2023 | 31 | 12 months | 97% |
| 2024 | 30 | 12 months | 100% |
| 2025 | 29 | 12 months | 93% |
Plea Agreements
Among the 30 people who pleaded guilty, 67% had a written plea agreement, and 33% were straight pleas with no agreement. A straight plea means the person pleaded guilty without a negotiated agreement with the government.
Most Sentences Were Within the Range
A total of 19 sentences (63%) were within the guideline range. Below the range at the government's request were 4 (13%), and below the range without a government request were 6 (20%). One sentence (3%) was above the range.
The within-range share was 60% in 2017 and 62% in 2019. Across all years under this guideline it was 61%, and across all federal cases in 2018 it was 51%.
No Fines or Restitution
A fine was ordered for 0 people (0%), and restitution for 0 (0%). A fine is a payment to the government, and restitution is payment to make up for a loss. Neither was ordered in 2018 for this guideline. Supervised release after prison was ordered for 25 people (83%), with a median term of 36 months.
Criminal History and the Federal Total
In criminal history category I, the lowest, were 27% of the group, and 10% were in category VI, the highest. Court-martial records have no criminal history field.
The Commission counted 69,425 people sentenced in federal court in fiscal year 2018 across every guideline. Their median prison term was 24 months, and 97% pleaded guilty. Over fiscal years 2016 to 2025, 310 people were sentenced under §2J1.6, and 98% were sent to prison.
Scope of the Numbers
The Commission classes these 30 cases as Administration of Justice offenses. That is the Commission's own offense type category, and it is separate from the guideline itself. Fiscal year 2018 ran from October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018.
Acquittals and dismissals are not in the data. The approved crosswalk has no close court-martial counterpart for this guideline, so this post reports the federal numbers on their own.
How We Counted
Everyone sentenced in federal court in fiscal year 2018 whose primary sentencing guideline was §2J1.6 (30), U.S. Sentencing Commission individual data files. The primary guideline is the one that set the offense level for the most serious count.
Federal fiscal years run from October 1 to September 30. No person, judge, or lawyer is identified in any of these records.
What to Keep in Mind
No parole in federal prison; credit for good conduct. Federal prison has no parole for crimes committed on or after November 1, 1987. A federal prisoner can earn up to 54 days of good conduct credit for each year of the sentence the judge imposed, which is about 15%. Some federal prisoners can also earn First Step Act time credits, but many offenses make a person ineligible. The numbers in this post are the sentences judges imposed, not the time people actually served.
Federal supervised release. Most federal prison sentences are followed by a term of supervised release that the judge sets as part of the sentence. A person who violates it can be sent back to prison. A court-martial cannot sentence anyone to supervision after release. Military parole and mandatory supervised release are decided later by a board, not by the judge at trial.
Who decides the sentence, and under what rules. Federal judges sentence every federal case. They must calculate the Sentencing Guidelines range, which is advisory, and must impose any mandatory minimum the statute requires unless an exception applies. In courts-martial, the accused could choose sentencing by members until the rules changed. For cases in which every guilty finding is for an offense committed after December 27, 2023, a military judge sentences alone, within sentencing parameters. Courts-martial tried in 2024 and later include both old-rule and new-rule cases, and the data cannot tell them apart.
Time periods. Federal numbers are by federal fiscal year (October 1 to September 30), based on the sentencing date. The military numbers are by trial date. Neither source has the date of the offense, so a change in law shows up in either data set gradually.
How life sentences and "time served" are counted. In the federal numbers, a life sentence is counted as 470 months, and any other sentence longer than 470 months is counted as just under 470 months. A sentence of "time served" is counted as one day (0.03 months). Averages are affected by these rules; medians much less.
Related Analysis
- Military Moves Toward Sentencing Guidelines to Mirror the Federal System (the background article)
- Federal Prosecution Analysis (all federal posts)
- How the Federal Comparison Data Was Built (sources and method)
- §2J1.6 Failure to Appear by Defendant: Federal Sentences, FY2016–2025 (overview)
- §2J1.6 Failure to Appear by Defendant: Federal Sentences, Fiscal Year 2017 (previous or next fiscal year)
- §2J1.6 Failure to Appear by Defendant: Federal Sentences, Fiscal Year 2019 (previous or next fiscal year)
- How Often Federal Judges Sentence Outside the Guideline Range
- Mandatory Minimums: How Many Federal Sentences Are Set by Congress
- U.S. Sentencing Commission, Individual Offender Datafiles (source)
- Federal Judicial Center, Integrated Database (criminal defendants) (source)
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.