United States law The law of the United States comprises many levels of Codification (law), codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the supreme law is the nation's Constitution of the United States, Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the ...

, a split sentence is a sentence under which the

defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one juris ...

serves up to half of his term of imprisonment outside of

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where Prisoner, people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state ...

Martha Stewart Martha Helen Stewart (, ; born August 3, 1941) is an American retail business woman, writer, and television personality. As the founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, focusing on home and hospitality, she gained success through a variety ...

received a split sentence. The

Bureau of Prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Justice that is responsible for all federal prisons in the country and provides for the care, custody, and control of federal prisoners ...

' general counsel has opined that when an offender has received a sentence of imprisonment, the Bureau of Prisons does not have general authority, either upon the recommendation of the sentencing judge or otherwise, to place such an offender in community confinement at the outset of his sentence or to transfer him from prison to community confinement at any time BOP chooses during the course of his sentence. A split sentence is only available to defendants who fall into Zone C of the Federal Sentencing Table. A "reverse split sentence" is one whereby the defendant is sentenced to a term of

probation Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offence (law), offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incar ...

which may be followed by a period of incarceration or, with respect to a

felony A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "''félonie''") to describe an offense that r ...

, into community control. Reverse split sentences are authorized by some states. A 2021 study, which compared individuals given a split sentence to comparable individuals given to a probation sentence, found that split sentencing increased the risk of future prison admissions and reduced the formal labor market employment among whites who were employed prior to their sentencing.

References

Sentencing (law) {{US-law-stub

See also

References