What is Supervised Release?

I keep posting articles under the topic of "Supervised Release" (see the label and link below), so I should post (again?) an explanation of what supervised release:

Supervised release, in contrast to parole, consists of restrictions, imposed by the judge at sentencing, called conditions or terms of supervised release, that are to take effect when the defendant is released from prison and continue for a specified term of years (which can be life). Parole shortens prison time, substituting restrictions on the freed prisoner. Supervised release does not shorten prison time; instead it imposes restrictions on the prisoner to take effect upon his release from prison. Parole mitigates punishment; supervised release augments it — most dramatically when the defendant, having been determined to have violated a condition or conditions of supervised release, is given, as punishment, a fresh term of imprisonment. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). Supervised release is required by statute in fewer than half of cases subject to the sentencing guidelines. United States Sentencing Commission, Federal Offenders Sentenced to Supervised Release 3 (July 2010), www. ussc.gov/sites/defaulVflles/pdfrtraining/ annual-national-training-seminar/2012/2_ Federal_Offenders_Senteneed_to_ Supervised_Release.pdf. In the other cases the sentencing judge has discretion to order or not order it, see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(a), but almost always the judge orders it in those cases too, United States Sentencing Commission, supra, at 69-70, often without explaining why. Although the defendants in our four cases object to particular conditions of supervised release imposed on them, they do not challenge the propriety of the inclusion of some conditions of supervised release in their sentences.

Supervised release as it is designed and administered has turned out to be problematic in a number of respects. See, e.g., Christine S. Scott-Hayward, “Shadow Sentencing: The Imposition of Federal Supervised Release,” 18 Berkeley J.Crim. L. 180 (2013); Fiona Doherty, “Indeterminate Sentencing Returns: The Invention of Supervised Release,” 88 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 958 (2013). One is that the list of conditions required or suggested is very long. The supervised-release statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b), imposes 9 “mandatory” conditions and 23 “discre*373tionary conditions,” for a total of 32. The sentencing guidelines get into the act as well, see U.S.S.G. § 5B1.3, imposing 10 “mandatory” conditions, 14 “standard” conditions, and 13 “special” or “additional conditions” — a total of 37. The statutory and guideline conditions, where they overlap, are generally the same substantively, but their wording often differs. Sentencing judges usually use the guideline wording rather than the statutory wording. All but the mandatory conditions are optional. And the judge is free to add or substitute (except with regard to the mandatory conditions) conditions of his own devising. Understandably, given the number of conditions, many district judges simply list the conditions that they impose, devoting little or no time at sentencing to explaining them or justifying their imposition.

United States v. Thompson, 777 F.3d 368 (2015) 

sch 1/14/23