Immigration Cases Continue to Surge, Says FY 2011 Commission Review

According to data released this month by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, immigration cases were the fastest growing segment of cases in the federal system for which an offender was sentenced in fiscal year 2011. Until fiscal year 2009, the most common federal crime had been drug-related.

In all federal criminal cases last year, more than 96 percent of convicted defendants plead guilty and were sentenced to incarceration plus a period of supervised release.

And while the majority of cases involved an individual defendant in FY 2011, 160 organizations also were sentenced for at least one federal criminal offense, up 7 percent from FY 2010. These and other case-related statistics can be found in the Overview of Federal Criminal Cases, Fiscal Year 2011 (pdf).