Beginning January 1, 1995, the practice of discretionary parole release was abolished in Virginia, and the existing system of sentence credits awarded to inmates for good behavior was revamped. During a 2021 Special Session of the General Assembly, § 53.1-202.3 was modified to increase the rate at which offenders convicted of certain non-violent felonies could earn sentence credits. Under the provisions of § 53.1-202.3, effective July 1, 2022, persons serving time for certain nonviolent felonies will be eligible to earn as much as 15 days for every 30 days served, based on their participation in programs and their record of institutional infractions during confinement. If a nonviolent felon earns at the highest rate throughout their sentence, they will serve no less than 67% of the court-ordered sentence. Others will continue to serve a minimum of 85% of the active sentence ordered by the court (felons in this category may earn a maximum of 4 ½ days for every 30 days).

The Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission was established to develop and administer Guidelines to provide Virginia’s judiciary with sentencing recommendations for felony cases under the new truth-in-sentencing laws. Under the current no-parole system, Guidelines recommendations for nonviolent offenders with no prior record of violence are tied to the amount of time they served during a period prior to the abolition of parole. In contrast, offenders convicted of violent crimes, and those with prior convictions for violent felonies, are subject to Guidelines recommendations up to six times longer than the historical time served in prison by similar offenders. In over a half-million felony cases sentenced under truth-insentencing laws, judges have agreed with Guidelines recommendations in more than 75% of cases.

This report focuses on defendants sentenced during the most recent year of available data, fiscal year (FY) 2024 (July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024). Concurrence is examined in a variety of ways in this report, and variations in data over the years are highlighted throughout.

In FY2024, eight judicial circuits contributed the majority of Guidelines cases. Those circuits, which include the Harrisonburg area (Circuit 26), Fredericksburg area (Circuit 15), Radford area (Circuit 27), Botetourt County area (Circuit 25), Virginia Beach (Circuit 2), Henrico (Circuit 14), Lynchburg area (Circuit 24), and Roanoke area (Circuit 23) comprised just over half (51%) of all worksheets received in FY2024 (Figure 1).

During FY2024, the Commission received 19,798 Sentencing Guideline worksheets. Of these, 1,350 worksheets contained errors or omissions that affected the Guidelines recommendation and analysis of the case. Users are becoming acclimated to the Sentencing Guidelines Worksheets Interactive File Transfer system, hereinafter referred to as “SWIFT," which is a system by which worksheets are submitted to the Commission electronically. The Commission continues to receive worksheets electronically, via scan, and via mail, and staff are working to retrieve the remaining worksheets. Furthermore, of the 19,798 worksheets received, staff excluded an additional 2,042 cases from the analysis where the court deferred findings under § 18.2-251/ § 18.2-258.1 (First Offender) and § 19.2-298.2/ § 19.2-303.6 (Deferred Disposition) to accurately capture judicial concurrence with Guidelines. For the purposes of conducting a clear evaluation of Sentencing Guidelines in effect for FY2024, the remaining sections of this chapter pertaining to judicial concurrence with guidelines recommendations focus only on those 16,406 cases for which Guidelines were completed and calculated correctly and did not include a deferred adjudication.