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UNDERSTANDING CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN FEDERAL SENTENCING
THE PERSON BEHIND THE OFFENSE
Federal sentencing requires more than calculating an advisory guideline range. The court must ultimately sentence an individual human being, taking into account not only the offense but also the defendant’s history, characteristics, circumstances, and prospects for the future.
Understanding criminal behavior can therefore be an important part of meaningful sentencing advocacy. Human conduct rarely results from a single cause. Development, environment, psychological functioning, substance use, family circumstances, life experiences, age, and individual vulnerabilities can interact in complicated ways. Understanding those influences does not excuse criminal conduct. It can, however, provide important context for understanding how the conduct occurred and what sentence is actually necessary.
Modern criminology has increasingly moved beyond simple explanations of nature versus nurture, recognizing instead the complex interaction between individual characteristics and environmental influences. Federal sentencing has likewise evolved toward greater recognition of human development, individualized circumstances, rehabilitation, and the capacity for change.
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR RARELY HAS A SINGLE CAUSE
BEYOND THE NATURE-VERSUS-NURTURE DEBATE
For generations, explanations of criminal behavior were often divided between competing perspectives. Some emphasized social and environmental influences—family, peers, poverty, neighborhood conditions, education, and opportunity. Others examined individual characteristics, including temperament, psychological functioning, neurological development, and biological influences.
Modern criminology provides a more complicated picture. Human behavior develops through the interaction of the individual and the environment. Personal characteristics can influence how someone responds to a particular environment, while experiences and environmental conditions can influence development, behavior, and future decision-making.
This helps explain why people exposed to similar circumstances do not necessarily follow the same path. Adversity may increase risk without making a particular outcome inevitable. Likewise, the presence of an individual vulnerability does not determine that a person will engage in criminal conduct. Risk and protective factors can interact throughout a person’s life.
For sentencing purposes, the distinction is important. Understanding the circumstances that contributed to criminal conduct is not the same as excusing it. A fuller understanding of development, environment, psychological functioning, addiction, trauma, relationships, and other influences can help a sentencing court evaluate both the circumstances surrounding the offense and the person who stands before the court.
SELF-CONTROL, EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING, AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
THE CAPACITY FOR JUDGMENT DEVELOPS OVER TIME
Self-control has long occupied a central place in criminological explanations of offending. But the capacity to control impulses, anticipate consequences, regulate emotions, and make reasoned decisions is more complicated than simply possessing—or failing to possess—good judgment.
Research in psychology and neuroscience has connected these abilities to executive functioning, including processes associated with the prefrontal cortex. These systems develop throughout childhood and adolescence and continue maturing into early adulthood. Development does not occur identically in every person, and individual development can also be affected by environmental conditions and life experiences.
This does not mean that youth or developmental immaturity eliminates responsibility for criminal conduct. It does mean that age and development can provide meaningful context when evaluating impulsivity, susceptibility to outside influence, decision-making, and the capacity for change.
These principles have become increasingly relevant to federal sentencing. In 2024, the United States Sentencing Commission expressly relied upon research concerning neurological development and the relationship between age and criminal behavior when it substantially revised its treatment of youthful individuals at sentencing.
THE AGE-CRIME CURVE
ONE OF CRIMINOLOGY’S MOST CONSISTENT FINDINGS
One of the most persistent findings in criminological research is the relationship between age and criminal behavior. Although the precise pattern varies by offense and population, criminal activity generally increases during adolescence, peaks during the late teenage years or early adulthood, and then declines as individuals grow older. Criminologists commonly refer to this pattern as the “age-crime curve.”
The significance of the age-crime curve extends beyond chronological age. Adolescence and young adulthood are periods of continuing psychological and neurological development. Compared with more mature adults, younger individuals as a group tend to demonstrate greater impulsivity, greater sensitivity to immediate rewards, and greater susceptibility to peer and other outside influences. At the same time, younger individuals generally possess substantial capacity for maturation and behavioral change.
The age-crime curve does not predict what any particular person will do, nor does youth excuse criminal conduct. It instead provides an important population-level insight: the likelihood of criminal behavior changes substantially over the human life course. A person’s age at the time of an offense—and the development and maturation that occur afterward—can therefore provide meaningful context when a court evaluates culpability, deterrence, rehabilitation, and the risk of future offending.
CRIMINOLOGICAL SCIENCE CHANGED FEDERAL SENTENCING POLICY
THE SENTENCING COMMISSION’S RECOGNITION OF YOUTH AND THE AGE-CRIME CURVE
In 2024, the United States Sentencing Commission made a significant change in its treatment of age at federal sentencing. Through Amendment 829, effective November 1, 2024, the Commission revised its policy statement on age to recognize that youthfulness at the time of an offense or prior offenses could support a sentence below the advisory guideline range.
The Commission expressly identified developmental considerations that criminologists and other researchers had studied for years. It recognized that environmental conditions, adverse childhood experiences, substance use, educational opportunities, and family relationships can affect development into the mid-20s. It also recognized that youthful individuals generally demonstrate greater impulsivity and susceptibility to outside influence while the brain continues developing into young adulthood—and that younger individuals may possess greater capacity for rehabilitation.
Most notably, the Commission expressly invoked the age-crime curve, describing it as one of criminology’s most consistent findings and recognizing that criminal behavior generally decreases with age. The amendment also acknowledged that appropriate interventions and protective factors may promote desistance from crime.
The Guidelines changed again in 2025. Amendment 836 eliminated §5H1.1 and most of the Guidelines’ traditional departure provisions as part of a broader restructuring of federal sentencing. But the Commission specifically explained that the change was intended to be outcome neutral. The deletion did not mean that age, development, or the reasoning underlying the former provisions had become irrelevant. Instead, the Commission explained that judges may continue considering such circumstances when determining whether a sentence outside the guideline range is appropriate under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
LIFE COURSE, TURNING POINTS, AND DESISTANCE
PEOPLE ARE NOT FROZEN AT THE MOMENT OF THEIR OFFENSE
Life-course criminology examines criminal behavior not as a fixed personal characteristic, but as something that can change over the course of a person’s life. Individuals may enter periods of offending, persist for different lengths of time, and eventually reduce or cease criminal behavior altogether—a process commonly described as desistance.
Age and maturation are part of that process, but they are not the entire story. Relationships, employment, education, parenthood, treatment, sobriety, changes in peer associations, and other significant life experiences can alter a person’s circumstances and strengthen connections to conventional life. Some changes occur gradually. Others become turning points that redirect the course of a person’s life.
This perspective is particularly important at sentencing because the person standing before the court may not be identical, in any meaningful sense, to the person who committed the offense months or years earlier. Post-offense conduct can reveal maturation, stability, treatment, responsibility, restored family relationships, productive employment, or other evidence bearing upon the likelihood of future criminal behavior.
Federal sentencing law permits the court to consider that broader human trajectory. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), sentencing involves the defendant’s history and characteristics as well as the need for the sentence imposed to protect the public, provide adequate deterrence, and provide needed correctional treatment. Individualized sentencing therefore requires more than asking what happened. It can also require asking what has happened to the person since—and where that person appears to be going.
RISK FACTORS ARE NOT DESTINY
UNDERSTANDING RISK WITHOUT PREDICTING A PERSON’S FUTURE
Criminology identifies numerous factors associated with an increased risk of criminal behavior. Childhood adversity, unstable family environments, substance abuse, educational disruption, antisocial peer relationships, economic disadvantage, psychological difficulties, and other circumstances may increase risk. But an increased statistical risk is not the same thing as destiny.
The same principle applies to individual characteristics. Impulsivity, difficulties with executive functioning, developmental immaturity, or other vulnerabilities may help explain why one person responds differently to circumstances than another. None of those characteristics determines that criminal behavior will occur.
Human lives also contain protective factors. Stable relationships, employment, education, treatment, sobriety, mentorship, family responsibilities, community ties, and maturation can reduce risk and support lasting behavioral change. Those factors may emerge or strengthen long after the circumstances that contributed to an offense.
This distinction matters in sentencing. A defendant should not be reduced either to the worst event in his life or to a collection of statistical risk factors. Individualized sentencing requires consideration of the person as a whole—including vulnerabilities and failures, but also strengths, development, demonstrated change, and realistic prospects for the future.
FROM CRIMINOLOGICAL SCIENCE TO SENTENCING ADVOCACY
TURNING CONTEXT INTO A MEANINGFUL SENTENCING ARGUMENT
Criminological research has little value in a courtroom if it remains abstract. Effective sentencing advocacy requires connecting broader principles of human behavior to the particular facts of an individual defendant’s life.
That may require examining the defendant’s age and development at the time of the offense, family and social environment, education, employment history, substance use, mental and emotional functioning, exposure to trauma or instability, relationships, and other circumstances that contributed to the path leading to the offense. Just as importantly, the inquiry should consider what has happened since: treatment, sobriety, employment, education, family responsibilities, maturation, acceptance of responsibility, and other evidence of meaningful change.
The objective is not to construct an excuse for criminal conduct. It is to provide the sentencing court with information necessary to understand the defendant as an individual and to determine what punishment is actually sufficient without being greater than necessary to accomplish the purposes of federal sentencing.
A persuasive sentencing presentation therefore does more than calculate an advisory guideline range. It can tell the court who the defendant was, what influenced the conduct that brought the defendant before the court, what has changed, and why those circumstances matter when determining the sentence that should follow.
A PERSPECTIVE INFORMED BY CRIMINOLOGY
ACADEMIC STUDY. PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE. INDIVIDUALIZED ADVOCACY.
Attorney Vincent E. Wisely’s approach to criminal defense has been shaped by more than twenty-five years of legal practice and by experience on multiple sides of the criminal justice system.
Before becoming a criminal defense attorney, Wisely served as a police officer and later as a prosecutor. He has also pursued graduate-level academic study in criminology and criminal behavior, examining subjects including theories of criminal behavior, self-control and executive functioning, human development, life-course criminology, and the interaction between individual and environmental influences. He has brought that academic and practical experience into the classroom as well, teaching criminological studies as an adjunct university professor.
Those perspectives provide different ways of examining the same fundamental questions: Why does criminal behavior occur? What circumstances contribute to it? Why do individuals exposed to similar circumstances sometimes follow very different paths? What causes people to change? And what can a person’s history, development, and conduct tell us about the future?
In federal sentencing, those questions can matter. Effective advocacy requires command of the law and the Sentencing Guidelines, but it can also require understanding the human being to whom those rules will be applied. Wisely’s experience in law enforcement, prosecution, criminal defense, academic study, and university teaching informs an approach to sentencing advocacy that considers both—the legal framework governing the sentence and the individual life behind the case.