For · federal criminal practice
A federal sentence is calculated from four different books.
The offense is in Title 18. The range is in the Guidelines Manual that was in force on the day of sentencing. The procedure is in the Criminal Rules. How the sentence is actually served — good conduct time, program eligibility, designation — is in Bureau of Prisons policy. Each of those moves on its own clock, and all four are answerable here today by date.
“What did §2B1.1 say at sentencing in 2019?”
corpus=guidelines · citation=ussg-2b1.1 · asOf=2019-06-01 → the 2018 edition, 2018-11-01 → 2023-11-01
“Is the acceptance-of-responsibility rule the same one that applied then?”
corpus=guidelines · citation=ussg-3e1.1 — in force since 2023-11-01, so for an earlier date, ask for the date
“What does the statute say about where the Bureau may designate a prisoner?”
corpus=statutes · citation=18-3621
“What did the court have to do before imposing sentence?”
corpus=rules · citation=frcrp-32
“Was this guideline deleted, or did it never exist?”
status: repealed, with its history — never a 404 that an agent reads as “no such rule”
What it takes
The corpora this runs on, named.
Sentencing Guidelines
416
read 2026-09-20
Statutes
1,946,798
read 2026-09-26
Court rules
49,704
read 2026-09-25
Agency guidance
20,436
read 2026-09-20
The Guidelines are a corpus of their own rather than a shelf of agency guidance, because a federal court must calculate the range and the commentary is authoritative. Serving them under the guidance disclaimer — “not binding law” — would be telling a sentencing lawyer something false about the only document that sets the number.
Title 18 and the Criminal Rules come from the statutes and rules corpora, which means the same point-in-time contract and the same provenance block. One call shape covers all four; only corpus changes.
Worked
Real calls, real records.
(2) (Apply the greatest) If the offense— (A) (i) involved 10 or more victims; (ii) was committed through mass-marketing; or (iii) resulted in substantial financial hardship to one or more victims, increase by 2 levels; (B) resulted in substantial financial hardship to five or more victims, increase by 4 levels…
- citation.display
- U.S.S.G. §2B1.1
- status
- active
- validFrom → validTo
- 2018-11-01 → 2023-11-01
- temporalBasis
- act-effective-date
- provenance.versionLabel
- ussg-2018
- provenance.sourceSystem
- ussc.gov
- provenance.contentHash
- 8124372bbc13f61c5932828b20043445d238d3ffbf53b18a5d60e91cf32ed36c
Same citation, same call, one added parameter — and a different edition, a different hash, and a closed validity window. That is the whole product in one diff.
check this record →(a) Commitment to Custody of Bureau of Prisons.—A person who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment pursuant to the provisions of subchapter D of chapter 227 shall be committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons until the expiration of the term imposed, or until earlier released for satisfactory behavior pursuant to the provisions of section 3624.
- citation.display
- 18 U.S.C. § 3621
- catchline
- Imprisonment of a convicted person
- status
- active
- temporalBasis
- compiled-edition
- provenance.sourceSystem
- uscode.house.gov
- provenance.retrievedAt
- 2026-07-22
The U.S. Code citation key is title-section: 18-3621. The release point it was cut from is reported live by /v1/law/coverage.
check this record →(b) Time of Sentencing. (1) In General. The court must impose sentence without unnecessary delay…
- citation.display
- Fed. R. Crim. P. 32
- catchline
- Sentencing and Judgment
- validFrom → validTo
- 2024-12-01 → present
- provenance.sourceSystem
- uscourts.gov
- citation.display
- U.S.S.G. §5K2.0
- catchline
- [Deleted]
- status
- repealed
- provenance.versionLabel
- ussg-2025
A deleted guideline is served as repealed, with its history, rather than 404'd. An agent that cannot tell "gone" from "never existed" will guess, and guessing is the failure mode this API is built against.
check this record →What this does not do
Four of the 267 Bureau of Prisons program statements are not served, and each is named rather than quietly dropped. PS 1410.05 is a scan with no text layer and this pipeline does not guess at images. Three more — PS 5215.06, PS 5266.11 and PS 5800.16 — are withheld because three independent extraction engines disagreed about what the page says, which turns the load red on purpose so that a person looks at them. The English text of PS 5330.11, the residential drug abuse programme, is not served because the Bureau does not publish it: the index lists it, the file answers 404, and only a Spanish change notice resolves. The § 3621(e) early-release criteria come from PS 5331.02 instead, and the day the Bureau reposts 5330.11 the next run picks it up with no change to any code.
A superseded statement is never withdrawn from this corpus. The Bureau deletes a program statement the day its replacement posts, which is precisely the day counsel needs the old text — so a statement that disappears from bop.gov stays queryable here, with the validity window that says when it stopped being current.
binding.law does not compute a guideline range, and will not. It serves the text that a range is computed from, with the edition and the hash attached, so that whoever does the computing can show their work. Data for agents, not agents.