Federal Sentencing Departures vs. Variances After the 2025 Changes
For twenty years, every federal defendant heard two words at sentencing, departure and variance, and almost nobody, including some lawyers, could explain the difference. Then, on November 1, 2025, the United States Sentencing Commission did something dramatic: it eliminated departures from the operative text of the guidelines almost entirely, collapsing federal sentencing from a three-step […]
