What Is Supervised Release?

I keep on posting under the topic of Supervised Release without explaining what it is. This post changes that oversight. Put simply, the federal government imprisoned me and when I finished my sentence the government keeps watch over me. In my case and until I can find time to petition for a modification, my supervision lasts for the remainder of my life.

For a more formal explanation I have these quotes from United States v. Kappes, 782 F.3d 828 (7th Cir. 2015):

In 1984, Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act, which replaced the federal parole system with the system of supervised release. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583; see generally S.Rep. No. 98-225 (1983), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182. The parole system allowed a convicted defendant to be released prior to the expiration of his prison term on conditions designed to reduce the likelihood of his committing further crimes....

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Under the replacement system of supervised release, judges impose conditions at sentencing which take effect after the completion of the defendant's prison term, and, in contrast to parole, do not reduce the length of the custodial portion of a defendant's sentence.^[2] The purposes of supervised release have been variously described as rehabilitation, deterrence, training and treatment, protection of the public, and reduction of recidivism. See United States v. Johnson, 529 U.S. 53, 59-60, 120 S.Ct. 1114, 146 L.Ed.2d 39 (2000); United States v. Siegel, 753 F.3d 705, 708 (7th Cir.2014); United States v. Evans, 727 F.3d 730, 733 (7th Cir.2013). Supervised release was not intended to be imposed for the purposes of punishment or incapacitation, "since those purposes will have been served to the extent necessary by the term of imprisonment." S.Rep. No. 98-225, at 125; see also Johnson, 529 U.S. at 59, 120 S.Ct. 1114....

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The change from supervised release being mandatory to discretionary has made little practical difference: between 2005 and 2009, district courts imposed a term of supervised release in 99.1 percent of cases with a prison sentence in excess of one year but not subject to statutorily-mandated supervised release. U.S. Sentencing Comm'n, Federal Offenders Sentenced to Supervised Release at 7, 52 n. 241. So while supervised release may have been intended "for those, and only those, who needed it," Johnson, 529 U.S. at 709, 120 S.Ct. 1795, the reality is that virtually all federal defendants who spend at least a year in custody are subject to supervised release....

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This dissonance finds its root in a probation officer's dual function: "to guide the [defendant] into constructive development" and to prevent "behavior that is deemed dangerous to the restoration of the individual into normal society." Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 478, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972). While the balance a particular probation officer strikes between supervision and enforcement may vary, we think it remains true that the ongoing supervisory relationship of a probation officer to a defendant "is not, or at least not entirely, adversarial." Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 879, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987)....

I do need to get my petition done. 

This whole blog represents my life under supervised release and what appears under the Supervised Release label (see below) represents what I am doing daily under this supervised release regime.  Please read widely here. Thank you.

sch 3/31/22