source: Caselaw Access Project

author: Justice Souter Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, Justice O’Connor,

license: Public Domain

text:
    UNITED STATES v. R. L. C.
    No. 90-1577.
    Argued December 10, 1991
    Decided March 24, 1992

      Souter, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, and III, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White, Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II-B and II-C, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White and Stevens, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Kennedy and Thomas, JJ., joined, post, p. 307. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 311. O’Con-nor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Blackmun, J., joined, post, p. 312.

      Paul J. Larkin, Jr., argued the cause for the United States. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Starr, Assistant Attorney General Mueller, and Deputy Solicitor General Bryson.

      Katherian D. Roe argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief were Daniel M. Scott, Scott F. Tilsen, and Andrew H. Mohring.

   Justice Souter

announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, and III, and an opinion with respect to Parts II-B and II-C, in which The Chief Justice, Justice White, and Justice Stevens join.

The provisions of the Juvenile Delinquency Act require the length of official detention in certain circumstances to be limited to “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult.” 18 U. S. C. § 5037(c)(1)(B). We.hold that this limitation refers to the maximum sentence that could be imposed if the juvenile were being sentenced after application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines.

1 — 1

Early m the morning of November 5, 1989, after a night of drinking, the then-16-year-old respondent R. L. C. and another juvenile stole a car with which they struck another automobile, fatally injuring one of its passengers, 2-year-old La Tesha Mountain. R. L. C. is a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, and these events took place on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, which is within Indian country as defined by federal law. These circumstances provide federal jurisdiction in this case. See 18 U. S. C. §§ 1151, 1162, 1153. Upon certifying that a proceeding was authorized in federal court under § 5082 on the ground that no state court had jurisdiction over the offense, the Government charged R. L. C. with an act of juvenile delinquency.

After a bench trial, the District Court found R. L. C. to be a juvenile who had driven a car recklessly while intoxicated and without the owner’s authorization, causing Mountain’s death. R. L. C. was held to have committed an act of juvenile delinquency within the meaning of § 5031, since his acts would have been the crime of involuntary manslaughter in violation of §§ 1112(a) and 1153 if committed by an adult. The maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter under 18 U. S. C. § 1112(b) is three years. At R. L. C.’s disposi-tional hearing, the District Court granted the Government’s request to impose the maximum penalty for respondent’s delinquency and accordingly committed him to official detention for three years.

Despite the manslaughter statute’s provision for an adult sentence of that length, the United States Court of Appeals for the' Eighth Circuit vacated R. L. C.’s sentence and remanded for resentencing, after concluding that 36 months exceeded the cap imposed by § 5037(c)(1)(B) upon the period of detention to which a juvenile delinquent may be sentenced. 915 F. 2d 320 (1990). Although the statute merely provides that juvenile detention may not extend beyond “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult,” the Court of Appeals read this language to bar a juvenile term longer than the sentence a court could have imposed on a similarly situated adult after applying the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Under the Guidelines, involuntary manslaughter caused by recklessness has a base offense level of 14. United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual § 2A1.4(a)(2) (Nov. 1991). The court found, and the Government agrees, see Brief for United States 22, n. 5, that because R. L. C. had the lowest possible criminal history level, Category I, the Guidelines would yield a sentencing range of 15-21 months for a similarly situated adult. The Court of Appeals therefore concluded that the maximum period of detention to which R. L. C. could be sentenced was 21 months.

The Government sought no stay of mandate from the Court of Appeals, and on remand the District Court imposed detention for 18 months. Although R. L. C. has now served this time, his failure to complete the 3-year detention originally imposed and the possibility that the remainder of it could be imposed saves the case from mootness. See United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U. S. 579, 581, n. 2 (1983). We granted the Government’s petition for certiorari, 501 U. S. 1230 (1991), to resolve the conflict between the Eighth Circuit’s holding in this case and the Ninth Circuit’s position, adopted in United States v. Marco L., 868 F. 2d 1121, cert. denied, 493 U. S. 956 (1989), and endorsed by the Government.

II

A

The Government suggests a straightforward enquiry into plain meaning to explain what is “authorized.” It argues that the word “authorized” must mean the maximum term of imprisonment provided for by the statute defining the offense, since only Congress can “authorize” a term of imprisonment in punishment for a crime. As against the position that the Sentencing Guidelines now circumscribe a trial court’s authority, the Government insists that our concern must be with the affirmative authority for imposing a sentence, which necessarily stems from statutory law. It maintains that in any event the Sentencing Commission’s congressional authorization to establish sentencing guidelines does not create affirmative authority to set punishments for crime, and that the Guidelines do not purport to authorize the punishments to which they relate.

But this is too easy. The answer to any suggestion that the statutory character of a specific penalty provision gives it primacy over administrative sentencing guidelines is that the mandate to apply the Guidelines is itself statutory. See 18 U. S. C. § 3553(b). More significantly, the Government’s argument that “authorization” refers only to what is affirmatively provided by penal statutes, without reference to the Sentencing Guidelines to be applied under statutory mandate, seems to us to beg the question. Of course it is true that no penalty would be “authorized” without a statute providing specifically for the penal consequences of defined criminal activity. The question, however, is whether Congress intended the courts to treat the upper limit of such a penalty as “authorized” even when proper application of a statutorily mandated Guideline in an adult case would bar imposition up to the limit, and an unwarranted upward departure from the proper Guideline range would be reversible error. § 3742. Here it suffices to say that the Government’s construction is by no means plain. The text is at least equally consistent with treating “authorized” to refer to the result of applying all statutes with a required bearing on the sentencing decision, including not only those that empower the court to sentence but those that limit the legitimacy of its exercise of that power. This, indeed, is arguably the more natural construction.

Plain-meaning analysis does not, then, provide the Government with a favorable answer. The most that can be said from examining the text in its present form is that the Government may claim its preferred construction to be one possible resolution of statutory ambiguity.

B

On the assumption that ambiguity exists, we turn to examine the textual evolution of the limitation in question and the legislative history that may explain or elucidate it. The predecessor of § 5037(c) as included in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 provided that a juvenile adjudged delinquent could be committed to the custody of the Attorney General for a period “not [to] extend beyond the juvenile’s twenty-first birthday or the maximum term which could have been imposed on an adult convicted of the same offense, whichever is sooner.” 18 U. S. C. § 5037(b) (1982 ed.) (emphasis added). In its current form, the statute refers to the “maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult.” 18 U. S. C. § 5037(c) (emphasis added). On its face, the current language suggests a change in reference from abstract consideration of the penalty permitted in punishment of the adult offense, to a focused en-quiry into the maximum that would be available in the circumstances of the particular juvenile before the court. The intervening history supports this reading.

With the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (chapter II of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub. L. 98-473, § 214(a), 98 Stat. 2013), §5037 was rewritten. As § 5037(c)(1)(B), its relevant provision became “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized by section 3581(b) if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult.” 18 U.S.C. §§ 5037(c)(1)(B), (c)(2)(B)(ii) (1982 ed., Supp. II) (emphasis added). The emphasized language was quickly deleted, however, by the Criminal Law and Procedure Technical Amendments Act of 1986, Pub. L. 99-646, § 21(a)(2), 100 Stat. 3596 (Technical Amendments Act), resulting in the present statutory text, “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult.” It thus lost the reference to § 3581(b), which would have guided the sentencing court in identifying the “authorized” term of imprisonment.

R. L. C. argues that this loss is highly significant. Section 3581(b) was, and still is, part of a classification system adopted in 1984 for use in setting the incidents of punishment for federal offenses by reference to letter grades reflecting their relative seriousness. One provision, for example, sets the maximum period of supervised release for each letter grade. §3583. Section 3581(b) sets out the maximum term of imprisonment for each letter grade, providing, for instance, that the authorized term of imprisonment for a class C felony is not more than 12 years, for a class D not more than 6, and for a class E not more than 3.

The deletion of the reference to § 3581(b) with its specific catalog of statutory máximums would seem to go against the Government’s position. Since, for example, a juvenile who had committed what would have been an adult class E felony would apparently have been subject to three years of detention, because § 3581(b) “authorized” up to three years of imprisonment for an adult, the deletion of the reference to § 3581(b) would appear to indicate some congressional intent to broaden the range of enquiry when determining what was authorized.

The Government, however, finds a different purpose, disclosed in the section-by-section analysis prepared by the Department of Justice to accompany the bill that became the Technical Amendments Act. The Department’s analysis included this explanation for the proposal to delete the reference to § 3581(b): “Because of the effect of 18 U. S. C. § 3559(b)(2), deleting the reference to 18 U. S. C. § 3581(b) will tie the maximum sentences for juveniles to the maximum for adults, rather than making juvenile sentences more severe than adult sentences.” 131 Cong. Rec. 14177 (1985). Congress had enacted § 3559 to reconcile the new sentencing schedule, providing for the incidents of conviction according to the offense’s assigned letter grade, with the pre-existing body of federal criminal statutes, which of course included no assignments of letter grades to the particular offenses they created. Section 3559(a) provides a formula for assigning the missing letter based on the maximum term of imprisonment set by the statute creating the offense. Thus, as it stood at the time of the Technical Amendments Act, it read:

“(a) Classification
“An offense that is not specifically classified by a letter grade in the section defining it, is classified—
“(1) if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is—
“(A) life imprisonment, or if the maximum penalty is death, as a Class A felony;
“(B) twenty years or more, as a Class B felony;
“(C) less than twenty years but ten or more years, as a Class C felony;
“(D) less than ten years but five or more years, as a Class D felony;
“(E) less than five years but more than one year, as a Class E felony;
“(F) one year or less but more than six months, as a Class A misdemeanor;
“(G) six months or less but more than thirty days, as a Class B misdemeanor;
“(H) thirty days or less but more than five days, as a Class C misdemeanor; or
“(I) five days or less, or if no imprisonment is authorized, as an infraction.
“(b) Effect of classification
“An offense classified under subsection (a) carries all the incidents assigned to the applicable letter designation except that:
“(1) the maximum fine that may be imposed is the fine authorized by the statute describing the offense, or by this chapter, whichever is the greater; and
“(2) the maximum term of imprisonment is the term authorized by the statute describing the offense.” 18 U. S. C. §3559 (1982 ed., Supp. II).

The Government explains that limiting the length of a juvenile detention to that authorized for an adult under § 3581(b) could in some circumstances have appeared to authorize a longer sentence than an adult could have received, when the offense involved was assigned no letter grade in its defining statute. Thus an offense created without letter grade and carrying a maximum term of two years would be treated under § 3559(a) as a class E felony. Section 3581(b) provides that a class E felony carried a maximum of three years. Regardless of that classification, §3559(b)(2) would certainly preclude sentencing any adult offender to more than two years. Tension would arise, however, where a juvenile had committed the act constituting the offense. Insofar as § 5037(c) capped the juvenile detention by reference to what was authorized for an adult, the maximum would have been two years; but insofar as it capped it by reference to what was authorized by § 3581(b), the limit might have appeared to be three. It was to break this tension, according to the Government, that the reference to § 3581(b) was deleted guaranteeing that no juvenile would be given detention longer than the maximum adult sentence authorized by the statute creating the offense. The amendment also, the Government says, left the law clear in its reference to the statute creating the offense as the measure of an “authorized” sentence. This conclusion is said to be confirmed by a statement in the House Report that the amendment “delet[es an] incorrect cross-referenc[e],” H. R. Rep. No. 99-797, p. 21 (1986), which, the Government argues, “suggests that no substantive change was intended.” Brief for United States 20, n. 4.

We agree with the Government’s argument up to a point. A sentencing court could certainly have been confused by the reference to § 3581(b). A sentencing judge considering a juvenile defendant charged with an offense bearing no letter classification, and told to look for “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized [according to letter grade] by section 3581(b),” would have turned first to § 3559(a) to obtain a letter classification. The court perhaps would have felt obliged to ignore the provision of § 3559(b) that “the maximum term of imprisonment is the term authorized by the statute describing the offense” in favor of a longer term provided for by the appropriate letter grade in § 3581(b). Indeed, the sentencing judge would have been faced with this puzzle in virtually every case, since the system of classifying by letter grades adopted in 1984 was only to be used in future legislation defining federal criminal offenses. See Brief for United States 16. No federal offense on the books at the time the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 was adopted carried a letter grade in its defining statute, and Congress has used the device only rarely in the ensuing years.

Thus, while it included a reference to § 3581(b), § 5037(c) was ambiguous. This ambiguity was resolved by an amendment that, absent promulgation of the Guidelines, might have left the question of the “authorized” maximum term of imprisonment to be determined only by reference to the penalty provided by the statute creating the offense, whether expressed as a term of years or simply by reference to letter grade. The legislative history does not prove, however, that Congress intended “authorized” to refer solely to the statute defining the offense despite the enactment of a statute requiring application of the Sentencing Guidelines, a provision that will generally provide a ceiling more favorable to the juvenile than that contained in the offense-defining statute.

Indeed, the contrary intent would seem the better inference. The Justice Department analysis of the Criminal Law and Procedure Technical Amendments Act of 1986, upon which the Government relies, went on to say that “deleting the reference to 18 U. S. C. § 3581(b) will tie the maximum sentences for juveniles to the maximum for adults, rather than making juvenile sentences more severe than adult sentences.” 131 Cong. Rec. 14177 (1985). This is an expression of purpose that today can be achieved only by reading “authorized” to refer to the maximum period of imprisonment that may be imposed consistently with 18 U. S. C. § 3553(b). That statute provides that “[t]he court shall impose a sentence . . . within the range” established for the category of offense as set forth in the Guidelines, “unless the court finds that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described.” § 3553(b).

The point is reinforced by other elements of the legislative history. The Senate Report accompanying the 1986 Technical Amendments Act states that the amendment “makes clear that juvenile sentences are to be of equal length as those for adult offenders committing the same crime.” S. Rep. No. 99-278, p. 3 (1986). This, in turn, reflects the statement in the Senate Report accompanying the Sentencing Reform Act, that the changes in juvenile sentencing law were included “in order to conform it to the changes made in adult sentencing laws.” S. Rep. No. 98-225, p. 155 (1983). The most fundamental of the Sentencing Reform Act’s changes was, of course, the creation of the Sentencing Commission, authorized to promulgate the guidelines required for use by sentencing courts. It hardly seems likely that Congress adopted the current § 5037(c) with a purpose to conform juvenile and adult maximum sentences without intending the recently authorized Guidelines scheme to be considered for that purpose. The legislative history thus reinforces our initial conclusion that § 5037 is better understood to refer to the maximum sentence permitted under the statute requiring application of the Guidelines.

C

We do not think any ambiguity survives. If any did, however, we would choose the construction yielding the shorter sentence by resting on the venerable rule of lenity, see, e. g., United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 347-348 (1971), rooted in “ ‘the instinctive distaste against men languishing in prison unless the lawmaker has clearly said they should,’ ” id., at 348 (quoting H. Friendly, Benchmarks 209 (1967)). While the rule has been applied not only to resolve issues about the substantive scope of criminal statutes, but to answer questions about the severity of sentencing, see Bifulco v. United States, 447 U. S. 381, 387 (1980), its application is unnecessary in this case, since “we have always reserved lenity for those situations in which a reasonable doubt persists about a statute’s intended scope even after resort to ‘the language and structure, legislative history, and motivating policies’ of the statute.” Moskal v. United States, 498 U. S. 103, 108 (1990) (citation omitted).

Ill

We hold, therefore, that application of the language in § 5037(c)(1)(B) permitting detention for a period not to exceed “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult” refers to the maximum length of sentence to which a similarly situated adult would be subject if convicted of the adult counterpart of the offense and sentenced under the statute requiring application of the Guidelines, § 3553(b). Although determining the maximum permissible sentence under § 5037(c)(1)(B) will therefore require sentencing and reviewing courts to determine an appropriate Guideline range in juvenile-delinquency proceedings, we emphasize that it does not require plenary application of the Guidelines to juvenile delinquents. Where that statutory provision applies, a sentencing court’s concern with the Guidelines goes solely to the upper limit of the proper Guideline range as setting the maximum term for which a juvenile may be committed to official detention, absent circumstances that would warrant departure under § 3553(b).

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Affirmed.

Justice Scalia,

with whom Justice Kennedy and Justice Thomas join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

In my view it is not consistent with the rule of lenity to construe a textually ambiguous penal statute against a criminal defendant on the basis of legislative history. Because Justice Souter’s opinion assumes the contrary, I join only Parts I, II-A, and III, and concur in the judgment.

The Court begins its analysis, quite properly, by examining the language of 18 U. S. C. § 5037(c)(1)(B) — which proves to be ambiguous. Reasonable doubt remains, the Court concludes, as to whether the provision refers (i) to the maximum punishment that could be imposed if the juvenile were being sentenced under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (15-21 months) or (ii) to the maximum punishment authorized by the statute defining the offense, see 18 U. S. C. § 1112(a) (36 months). Ante, at 298. With that conclusion I agree — and that conclusion should end the matter. The rule of lenity, in my view, prescribes the result when a criminal statute is ambiguous: The more lenient interpretation must prevail.

Yet the plurality continues. Armed with its warrant of textual ambiguity, the plurality conducts a search of § 5037’s legislative history to determine whether that clarifies the statute. Happily for this defendant, the plurality’s extratex-tual inquiry is benign: It uncovers evidence that the “better understood” reading of § 5037 is the more lenient one. Ante, at 305. But this methodology contemplates as well a different ending, one in which something said in a Committee Report causes the criminal law to be stricter than the text of the law displays. According to the plurality, “‘[W]e have always reserved [the rule of] lenity for those situations in which a reasonable doubt persists about a statute’s intended scope even after resort to “the language and structure, legislative history, and motivating policies” of the statute.’” Ante, at 305-306 (quoting Moskal v. United States, 498 U. S. 103, 108 (1990) (citation omitted)). I doubt that Moskal accurately characterizes the law in this area, and I am certain that its treatment of “the venerable rule of lenity,” ante, at 305,- does not venerate the important values the old rule serves.

The Moskal formulation of the rule, in approving reliance on a statute’s “motivating policies” (an obscure phrase), seems contrary to our statement in Hughey v. United States, 495 U. S. 411, 422 (1990), that “[e]ven [where] the statutory language ... [is] ambiguous, longstanding principles of lenity . . . preclude our resolution of the ambiguity against [the criminal defendant] on the basis of general declarations of policy in the statute and legislative history.” And insofar as Moskal requires consideration of legislative history at all, it compromises what we have described to be purposes of the lenity rule. “[A] fair warning,” we have said, “should be given to the world in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed. To make the warning fair, so far as possible the line should be clear.” McBoyle v. United States, 283 U. S. 25, 27 (1931). “[T]he rule of lenity ensures that criminal statutes will provide fair warning concerning conduct rendered illegal.” Liparota v. United States, 471 U. S. 419, 427 (1985). It may well be true that in most cases the proposition that the words of the United States Code or the Statutes at Large give adequate notice to the citizen is something of a fiction, see McBoyle, supra, at 27, albeit one required in any system of law; but necessary fiction descends to needless farce when the public is charged even with knowledge of Committee Reports.

MoskaVs mode of analysis also disserves the rule of lenity’s other purpose: assuring that the society, through its representatives, has genuinely called for the punishment to be meted out. “[B]ecause of the seriousness of criminal penalties, and because criminal punishment usually represents the moral condemnation of the community, legislatures and not courts should define criminal activity.” United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 348 (1971). See also Liparota, supra, at 427; United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95 (1820). The rule reflects, as the plurality acknowledges, “‘“the instinctive distaste against men languishing in prison unless the lawmaker has clearly said they should.” ’ ” Ante, at 305 (quoting Bass, supra, at 348, and H. Friendly, Benchmarks 209 (1967)). But legislative history can never provide assurance against that unacceptable result. After all, “[a] statute is a statute,” ante, at 305, n. 5, and no matter how “authoritative” the history may be — even if it is that veritable Rosetta Stone of legislative archaeology, a crystal clear Committee Report — one can never be sure that the legislators who voted for the text of the bill were aware of it. The only thing that was authoritatively adopted for sure was the text of the enactment; the rest is' necessarily speculation. Where it is doubtful whether the text includes the penalty, the penalty ought not be imposed. “[T]he moral condemnation of the community,” Bass, supra, at 348, is no more re-fleeted in the views of a majority of a single committee of congressmen (assuming, of course, they have genuinely considered what their staff has produced) than it is reflected in the views of a majority of an appellate court; we should feel no less concerned about “men languishing in prison” at the direction of the one than of the other.

We have in a number of cases other than Moskal done what the plurality has done here: inquired into legislative history and invoked it to support or at least permit the more lenient reading. But only once, to my knowledge, have we relied on legislative history to “clarify” a statute, explicitly found to be facially ambiguous, against the interest of a criminal defendant. In Dixson v. United States, 465 U. S. 482, 500-501, n. 19 (1984), the Court relied on legislative history to determine that defendants, officers of a corporation responsible for administering federal block grants, were “public officials” within the meaning of 18 U. S. C. § 201(a). The opinion does not trouble to discuss the “fair warning” or “condemnation of the community” implications of its decision, and both of the cases it cites in supposed support of its holding found the statute at hand not to be facially ambiguous. See United States v. Moore, 423 U. S. 122, 131 (1975) (“By its terms § 841 reaches ‘any person’ ” and “does not exempt (as it could have) ‘all registrants’ or ‘all persons registered under this Act’ ”); United States v. Brown, 333 U. S. 18, 22 (1948) (“The legislation reflects an unmistakable intention to provide punishment for escape or attempted escape to be superimposed upon the punishment meted out for previous offenses. This appears from the face of the statute itself”). I think Dixson weak (indeed, utterly unreasoned) foundation for a rule of construction that permits legislative history to satisfy the ancient requirement that criminal statutes speak “plainly and unmistakably,” United States v. Gradwell, 243 U. S. 476, 485 (1917); see also Bass, supra, at 348.

In sum, I would not embrace, as the plurality does, the Moskal formulation of this canon of construction, lest lower courts take the dictum to heart. I would acknowledge the tension in our precedents, the absence of an examination of the consequences of the Moskal mode of analysis, and the consequent conclusion that Moskal may not be good law.

Justice Thomas,

concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I agree with Justice Sc alia that the use of legislative history to construe an otherwise ambiguous penal statute against a criminal defendant is difficult to reconcile with the rule of lenity. I write separately, however, to emphasize that the rule is not triggered merely because a statute appears textually ambiguous on its face. Just last Term, we reaffirmed that the rule operates only “‘at the end of the process’” of construction, Chapman v. United States, 500 U. S. 453, 463 (1991) (quoting Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, 596 (1961)), if ambiguity remains “even after a court has “‘seize[d] every thing from which aid can be derived,” ’ ” ibid, (quoting United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 347 (1971), in turn quoting United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386 (1805)). Thus, although we require Congress to enact “clear and definite” penal statutes, United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U. S. 218, 221-222 (1952), we also consult our own “well-established principles of statutory construction,” Gozlon-Peretz v. United States, 498 U. S. 395, 410 (1991), in determining whether the relevant text is clear and definite. See, e. g., id., at 404 (applying the rule in Arnold v. United States, 9 Cranch 104, 119-120 (1815), that statutes become effective immediately); Albernaz v. United States, 450 U. S. 333, 337-342 (1981) (applying the rule in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299, 304 (1932), to establish the permissibility of multiple punishments).

These cases, I think, demonstrate that we must presume familiarity not only with the United States Code, see ante, at 309, but also with the United States Reports, in which we have developed innumerable rules of construction powerful enough to make clear an otherwise ambiguous penal statute. Cf. Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843, n. 9 (1984) (“clear congressional intent” may be discerned by application of “traditional tools of statutory construction”). Like Congress’ statutes, the decisions of this Court are law, the knowledge of which we have always imputed to the citizenry. At issue here, though, is a rule that would also require knowledge of committee reports and floor statements, which are not law. I agree with Justice Scalia that there appears scant justification for extending the “necessary fiction” that citizens know the law, see ante, at 309, to such extralegal materials.

Justice O’Connor,

with whom Justice Blackmun joins, dissenting.

By failing to interpret 18 U. S. C. § 5037(c)(1)(B) in light of the statutory scheme of which it is a part, the Court interprets a “technical amendment” to make sweeping changes to the process and focus of juvenile sentencing. Instead, the Court should honor Congress’ clear intention to leave settled practice in juvenile sentencing undisturbed.

When Congress enacted the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, it authorized the United States Sentencing Commission-(Sentencing Commission or Commission) to overhaul the discretionary system of adult sentencing. As an important aspect of this overhaul, Guidelines sentencing formalizes sentencing procedures. The Commission explains:

“In pre-guidelines practice, factors relevant to sentencing were often determined in an informal fashion. The informality was to some extent explained by the fact that particular offense and offender characteristics rarely had a highly specific or required sentencing consequence. This situation will no longer exist under sentencing guidelines. The court’s resolution of disputed sentencing factors will usually have a measurable effect on the applicable punishment. More formal ity is therefore unavoidable if the sentencing process is to be accurate and fair.” United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual § 6A1.3, comment (Nov. 1991) (USSG).

Another significant change permits an appeal when the Guidelines are incorrectly applied or departed from, 18 U. S. C. § 3742; under prior law, a sentence within statutory limits was not generally subject to review, United States v. Tucker, 404 U. S. 443, 447 (1972). Thus, factual findings made at adult sentencing hearings can be challenged on appeal.

When Congress made these fundamental changes in sentencing, it repealed the Youth Corrections Act, Pub. L. 98-473, Title II, § 218(a)(8), 98 Stat. 2027 (1984), which gave special treatment to defendants under 22. Congress did not, however, repeal the Juvenile Delinquency Act, which applies to defendants under 18, and clearly indicated that the Commission was only to study the feasibility of sentencing guidelines for juveniles, see 28 U. S. C. §§ 995(a)(l)-(a)(9), a process which is still in progress. Brief for United States 11, n. 1. Thus, Congress did not intend the Guidelines to apply to juveniles. Section 5037(c)(1)(B) must be interpreted against this backdrop.

Before the Sentencing Reform Act, § 5037(c)(1)(B) limited juvenile sentences by the correlative adult statutory maximum. As part of the Sentencing Reform Act, Congress made clear that this past practice would remain the same by limiting juvenile sentences to: “the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized by section 3581(b) if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult,” 18 U. S. C. § 5037(c)(1)(B) (1982 ed., Supp. II) (emphasis added). The reference to § 3581(b), which classifies offenses and sets out maximum terms, clarified that the statutory maximum of the offense, not the Guideline maximum, would still limit the juvenile’s sentence. Thus, consonant with its decision to leave juvenile sentencing in place, Congress did not change § 5037(c)(1)(B) to require sentencing judges in juvenile cases to calculate Guideline maximum sentences.

As the plurality acknowledges, ante, at 299-304, the cross-reference to § 3581(b) added by the Sentencing Reform Act created a new ambiguity as to whether the maximum sentence referred to was that authorized in the particular offense statute, or in the offense classification statute. To resolve the ambiguity, the cross-reference was deleted in 1986 as one of numerous technical amendments. The Court reads this technical amendment as changing § 3581’s reference from the statutory maximum to the Guideline maximum, even though before the amendment the statute clearly did not refer to the Guideline maximum. While the original version of § 5037(c)(1)(B) was ambiguous in other respects, there was never any question that § 5037(c)(1)(B) referred to the adult statutory maximum. There is no indication that Congress intended to change pre-existing practice. Section 5037(c) (1)(B), read in this context, still unambiguously refers to the statutory maximum. And because § 5037(c)(1)(B) is unambiguous in this respect, the rule of lenity does not apply here. Moskal v. United States, 498 U. S. 103, 108 (1990) (Court may look to structure of statute to ascertain the sense of a provision before resorting to rule of lenity). The Court, however, construes § 5037(c)(1)(B) to change pre-existing practice only by reading it in a vacuum apart from the rest of the Sentencing Reform Act, thus violating the canon of construction that “the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.” Davis v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 489 U. S. 803, 809 (1989).

The practical implications of the Court’s reading demonstrate why its construction runs contrary to Congress’ decision not to apply the Guidelines to juveniles. Requiring a district court to calculate a Guideline maximum for each juvenile imports formal factfinding procedures foreign to the discretionary sentencing system Congress intended to retain. Juvenile proceedings, in contrast to adult proceedings, have traditionally aspired to be “intimate, informal [and] protective.” McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U. S. 528, 545 (1971). One reason for the traditional informality of juvenile proceedings is that the focus of sentencing is on treatment, not punishment. The presumption is that juveniles are still teachable and not yet “hardened criminals.” S. Rep. No. 1989, 75th Cong., 3d Sess., 1 (1938). See McKeiver, supra; 18 U. S. C. § 5039 (“Whenever possible, the Attorney General shall commit a juvenile to a foster home or community-based facility located in or near his home community”). As a result, the sentencing considerations relevant to juveniles are far different from those relevant to adults.

The Court asserts, naively it seems to me, that it is not requiring “plenary application” of the Guidelines, ante, at 307, and makes the process of determining the Guideline maximum seem easy — a court need only look at the offense the juvenile was found guilty of violating and his criminal history, ante, at 296. In practice, however, calculating a Guideline maximum is much more complicated. Even in this relatively straightforward case, respondent was said to have stolen the car he was driving. Although apparently not placed in issue at the sentencing hearing, that conduct might, if proven and connected to the offense of which respondent was convicted, enhance the applicable Guideline maximum as “relevant conduct.” See USSG § 1B1.3. Respondent’s role in the offense might also warrant an adjustment of the Guideline maximum. §§3B1.1, 3B1.2. The District Court made a determination that respondent had not accepted responsibility, and that finding changed the calculation of the Guideline maximum. Tr. 3 (Jan. 25, 1991), §3E1.1. The District Court also had to take into account factors not considered by the Guidelines in determining whether or not a departure was warranted, which would increase or decrease the “maximum” sentence by an undiscernible “reasonable” amount. Tr. 3-4, 18 U. S. C. § 3553(b). In short, the Guideline maximum is not static or readily ascertainable, but depends on particularized findings of fact and discretionary determinations made by the sentencing judge.

These determinations may even require adversarial evi-dentiary hearings. Yet such formal factual investigations are not provided for by the Juvenile Delinquency Act. There is no indication in the statute that the judge is required to support the sentence with particular findings. USSG §6A1.3 and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(a)(1), as amended after the Guidelines, do provide for an adversarial sentencing procedure for adults that accommodates Guideline factfinding. Rule 32 does not apply when it conflicts with provisions of the Juvenile Delinquency Act, however, see Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 54(b)(5), and it seems to me a serious question whether adversarial factfinding is what Congress had in mind for juvenile sentencing. An even more serious question is whether Congress intended juveniles to be able to appeal the findings of fact that determine the Guideline maximum. Yet the Court’s decision would seem to require provision for such appeals.

In addition, a Guideline maximum for an adult incorporates factors the Sentencing Commission has found irrelevant to juvenile sentencing, see, e.g., USSG §4B1.1 (career offender status inapplicable to defendants under 18), and does not incorporate factors Congress has found relevant to juvenile sentencing, see, e. g., USSG §§5H1.1, 5H1.6 (age and family ties irrelevant to Guideline sentencing). As a result, the Guideline maximum for an adult cannot serve as a useful point of comparison. In sum, the cumbersome process of determining a comparable Guideline maximum threatens to dominate the juvenile sentencing hearing at the expense of considerations more relevant to juveniles.

I cannot infer that Congress meant to overhaul and refocus the procedures of juvenile sentencing in such a fundamental way merely by deleting a cross-reference in a technical amendment, especially when Congress expressly left juvenile sentencing out of the scope of the Sentencing Reform Act and directed the Commission to examine how sentencing guidelines might be tailored to juveniles.

This case is admittedly unusual in that respondent was sentenced to a longer sentence than a similarly situated adult. Before the Guidelines were enacted, however, such anomalies were not unknown: A juvenile could receive a longer sentence than a similarly situated adult, as long as the sentence was within the statutory maximum. We should not try to address the disparity presented in this particular case by changing all juvenile sentencing in ways that Congress did not intend. Instead, we should wait for the Sentencing Commission and Congress to decide whether to fashion appropriate guidelines for juveniles. For this reason, I respectfully dissent.

       Title 18 U. S. C. §5037(c) provides:.
      “(c) The term for which official detention may be ordered for a juvenile found to be a juvenile delinquent may not extend'—
      “(1) in the case of a juvenile who is less than eighteen years old, beyond the lesser of—

        “(A) the date when the juvenile becomes twenty-one years old; or
      “(B) the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult; or
      “(2) in the case of a juvenile who is between eighteen and twenty-one years old—
      “(A) who if convicted as an adult would be convicted of a Class A, B, or C felony, beyond five years; or
      “(B) in any other case beyond the lesser of—
      “(i) three years; or
      “(ii) the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult.”

       R. L. C. argues that the broader statutory purpose supports his position. He contends that longer juvenile sentences are only justified by a rehabilitative purpose. See, e. g., Carter v. United States, 113 U. S. App. D. C. 123, 125, 306 F. 2d 283, 285 (1962) (imposing a longer juvenile sentence under the now-repealed Youth Corrections Act) (“[Rjehabilitation may be regarded as comprising the quid pro quo for a longer confinement but under different conditions and terms than a defendant would undergo in an ordinary prison”). He then suggests that the Sentencing Reform Act rejected the rehabilitative model not merely for adult imprisonment, see Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361, 366-367 (1989), but for juveniles as well. See Brief for Respondent 19. While it is true that some rehabilitative tools were removed from the juvenile penalty scheme in 1984, see Pub. L. 98-473, § 214(b), 98 Stat. 2014 (abolishing parole for juvenile delinquents), the Juvenile Delinquency Act does not completely reject rehabilitative objectives. See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. §§5035, 5039. We do not think a broader congressional purpose points clearly in either party’s direction.

       “(b) Authorized terms. — The authorized terms of imprisonment are—
      “(1) for a Class A felony, the duration of the defendant’s life or any period of time;
      “(2) for a Class B felony, not more than twenty-five years;
      “(3) for a Class C felony, not more than twelve years;
      “(4) for a Class D felony, not more than six years;
      “(5) for a Class E felony, not more than three years;
      “(6) for a Class A misdemeanor, not more than one year;
      “(7) for a Class B misdemeanor, not more than six months;
      “(8) for a Class C misdemeanor, not more than thirty days; and
      “(9) for an infraction, not more than five days.” 18 U. S. C. § 3581.

       We speak here of an indication appearing solely from the face of the text. In fact, so far as we can tell, at the time of the amendment no federal statute defining an offense referred to it by letter grade.

       The dissent takes us to task for reliance upon a “technical amendment.” But a statute is a statute, whatever its label. Although the critical congressional enactment, the deletion of the reference to § 3681(b), came in the Technical Amendments Act, we have applied the usual tools of statutory construction: the language left in the statute after its amendment in 1986 is most naturally read to refer to the term of imprisonment authorized after application of the statute mandating use of the Guidelines. The legislative history of the Technical Amendments Act reinforces this conclusion.

       Justice Scalia questions the soundness of Moskal’s statement that we have reserved lenity for those cases (unlike this one) in which after examining “the ... structure, legislative history, and motivating policies,” in addition to the text of an ambiguous criminal statute, we are still left with a reasonable doubt about the intended scope of the statute’s application. But the Court has not in the past approached the use of lenity in the way Justice Scalia would have it.
      It is true that the need for fair warning will make it “rare that legislative history or statutory policies will support a construction of a statute broader than that clearly warranted by the text,” Crandon v. United States, 494 U. S. 162, 160 (1990), and that “general declarations of policy,” whether in the text or the legislative history, will not support construction of an ambiguous criminal statute against the defendant, Hughey v. United States, 496 U. S. 411, 422 (1990). But lenity does not always require the “narrowest” construction, and our cases have recognized that a broader construction may be permissible on the basis of nontextual factors that make clear the legislative intent where it is within the fair meaning of the statutory language. See Dixson v. United States, 465 U. S. 482, 500-501, n. 19 (1984). Cf. McBoyle v. United States, 283 U. S. 25, 27 (1931) (a criminal statute should be construed in such a way that its language gives “fair warning” to the “common mind”). Whether lenity should be given the more immediate and dispositive role Justice Scalia espouses is an issue that is not raised and need not be reached in this case.

       The Sentencing Guidelines, of course, do not directly apply to juvenile-delinquency proceedings. We observe that 28 U. S. C. § 995(a)(19), also enacted as part of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, gives the Sentencing Commission power to “study the feasibility of developing guidelines for the disposition of juvenile delinquents.” The Government reports that the Sentencing Commission has recently begun such a study. See Brief for United States 11, n. 1.


author: Justice Souter

text:
    NATIONWIDE MUTUAL INSURANCE CO. et al. v. DARDEN
    No. 90-1802.
    Argued January 21, 1992
    Decided March 24, 1992

      Souter, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

      George Robinson Ragsdale argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Gordon E. McCutchan, Robert M. Parsons, Craig G. Dalton, Jr., Francis M. Gregory, Jr., and Margaret M. Richardson.

      Christopher J. Wright argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Starr, Deputy Solicitor General Mahoney, Allen H. Feldman, and Elizabeth Hopkins.

      Marion G. Follin III argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent.

        Edward N. Delaney and Russell A Hollrah filed a brief for the National Association of Independent Insurers as amicus curiae urging reversal.

   Justice Souter

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case we construe the term “employee” as it appears in § 3(6) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 834, 29 U. S. C. § 1002(6), and read it to incorporate traditional agency law criteria for identifying master-servant relationships.

I

From 1962 through 1980, respondent Robert Darden operated an insurance agency according to the terms of several contracts he signed with petitioners Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. et al. Darden promised to sell only Nationwide insurance policies, and, in exchange, Nationwide agreed to pay him commissions on his sales and enroll him in a company retirement scheme called the “Agent’s Security Compensation Plan” (Plan). The Plan consisted of two different programs: the “Deferred Compensation Incentive Credit Plan,” under which Nationwide annually credited an agent’s retirement account with a sum based on his business performance, and the “Extended Earnings Plan,” under which Nationwide paid an agent, upon retirement or termination, a sum equal to the total of his policy renewal fees for the previous 12 months.

Such were the contractual terms, however, that Darden would forfeit his entitlement to the Plan’s benefits if, within a year of his termination and 25 miles of his prior business location, he sold insurance for Nationwide’s competitors. The contracts also disqualified him from receiving those benefits if, after he stopped representing Nationwide, he ever induced a Nationwide policyholder to cancel one of its policies.

In November 1980, Nationwide exercised its contractual right to end its relationship with Darden. A month later, Darden became an independent insurance agent and, doing business from his old office, sold insurance policies for several of Nationwide’s competitors. The company reacted with the charge that his new business activities disqualified him from receiving the Plan benefits to which he would have been entitled otherwise. Darden then sued for the benefits, which he claimed were nonforfeitable because already vested under the terms of ERISA. 29 U. S. C. § 1053(a).

Darden brought his action under 29 U. S. C. § 1132(a), which enables a benefit plan “participant” to enforce the substantive provisions of ERISA. The Act elsewhere defines “participant” as “any employee or former employee of an employer .. . who is or may become eligible to- receive a benefit of any type from an employee benefit plan . . . .” § 1002(7). Thus, Darden’s ERISA claim can succeed only if he was Nationwide’s “employee,” a term the Act defines as “any individual employed by an employer.” § 1002(6).

It was on this point that the District Court granted summary judgment to Nationwide. After applying common-law agency principles and, to an extent unspecified, our decision in United States v. Silk, 331 U. S. 704 (1947), the court found that “ ‘the total factual context’ of Mr. Darden’s relationship with Nationwide shows that he was an independent contractor and not an employee.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a, 50a, quoting NLRB v. United Ins. Co. of America, 390 U. S. 254 (1968).

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated. Darden v. Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co., 796 F. 2d 701 (1986). After observing that “Darden most probably would not qualify as an employee” under traditional principles of agency law, id., at 705, it found the traditional definition inconsistent with the “ ‘declared policy and purposes’ ” of ERISA, id., at 706, quoting Silk, supra, at 713, and NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131-132 (1944), and specifically with the congressional statement of purpose found in § 2 of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 1001. It therefore held that an ERISA plaintiff can qualify as an “employee” simply by showing “(1) that he had a reasonable expectation that he would receive [pension] benefits, (2) that he relied on this expectation, and (3) that he lacked the economic bargaining power to contract out of [benefit plan] forfeiture provisions.” 922 F. 2d 203, 205 (CA4 1991) (summarizing 796 F. 2d 701 (CA4 1986)). The court remanded the case to the District Court, which then found that Darden had been Nationwide’s “employee” under the standard set by the Court of Appeals. 717 F. Supp. 388 (EDNC 1989). The Court of Appeals affirmed. 922 F. 2d 203 (1991).

In due course, Nationwide filed a petition for certiorari, which we granted on October 15, 1991. 502 U. S. 905. We now reverse.

II

We have often been asked to construe the meaning of “employee” where the statute containing the term does not helpfully define it. Most recently we confronted this problem in Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U. S. 730 (1989), a case in which a sculptor and a nonprofit group each claimed copyright ownership in a statue the group had commissioned from the artist. The dispute ultimately turned on whether, by the terms of §101 of the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U. S. C. § 101, the statue had been “prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment.” Because the Copyright Act nowhere defined the term “employee,” we unanimously applied the “well established” principle that

“[w]here Congress uses terms that have accumulated settled meaning under ... the common law, a court must infer, unless the statute otherwise dictates, that Congress means to incorporate the established meaning of these terms. ... In the past, when Congress has used the term ‘employee’ without defining it, we have concluded that Congress intended to describe the conventional master-servant relationship as understood by common-law agency doctrine. See, e. g., Kelley v. Southern Pacific Co., 419 U. S. 318, 322-323 (1974); Baker v. Texas & Pacific R. Co., 359 U. S. 227, 228 (1959) (per curiam); Robinson v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 237 U. S. 84, 94 (1915).” 490 U. S., at 739-740 (internal quotation marks omitted).

While we supported this reading of the Copyright Act with other observations, the general rule stood as independent authority for the decision.

So too should it stand here. ERISA’s nominal definition of “employee” as “any individual employed by an employer,” 29 U. S. C. § 1002(6), is completely circular and explains nothing. As for the rest of the Act, Darden does not cite, and we do not find, any provision either giving specific guidance on the term’s meaning or suggesting that construing it to incorporate traditional agency law principles would thwart the congressional design or lead to absurd results. Thus, we adopt a common-law test for determining who qualifies as an “employee” under ERISA, a test we most recently summarized in Reid:

“In determining whether a hired party is an employee under the general common law of agency, we consider the hiring party’s right to control the manner and means by which the product is accomplished. Among the other factors relevant to this inquiry are the skill required; the source of the instrumentalities and tools; the location of the work; the duration of the relationship between the parties; whether the hiring party has the right to assign additional projects to the hired party; the extent of the hired party’s discretion over when and how long to work; the method of payment; the hired party’s role in hiring and paying assistants; whether the work is part of the regular business of the hiring party; whether the hiring party is in business; the provision of employee benefits; and the tax treatment of the hired party.” 490 U. S., at 751-752 (footnotes omitted).

Cf. Restatement (Second) of Agency § 220(2) (1958) (listing nonexhaustive criteria for identifying master-servant relationship); Rev. Rui. 87-41, 1987-1 Cum. Bull. 296, 298-299 (setting forth 20 factors as guides in determining whether an individual qualifies as a common-law “employee” in various tax law contexts). Since the common-law test contains “no shorthand formula or magic phrase that can be applied to find the answer,... all of the incidents of the relationship must be assessed and weighed with no one factor being decisive.” NLRB v. United Ins. Co. of America, 390 U. S., at 258.

In taking its different tack, the Court of Appeals cited NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S., at 120-129, and United States v. Silk, 331 U. S., at 713, for the proposition that “the content of the term ‘employee’ in the context of a particular federal statute is ‘to be construed “in the light of the mischief to be corrected and the end to be attained.” ’ ” Darden, 796 F. 2d, at 706, quoting Silk, supra, at 713, in turn quoting Hearst, supra, at 124. But Hearst and Silk, which interpreted “employee” for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act and Social Security Act, respectively, are feeble precedents for unmooring the term from the common law. In each case, the Court read “employee,” which neither statute helpfully defined, to imply something broader than the common-law definition; after each opinion, Congress amended the statute so construed to demonstrate that the usual common-law principles were the keys to meaning. See United Ins. Co., supra, at 256 (“Congressional reaction to [Hearst] was adverse and Congress passed an amendment . . . [t]he obvious purpose of [which] was to have the . . . courts apply general agency principles in distinguishing between employees and independent contractors under the Act”); Social Security Act of 1948, ch. 468, § 1(a), 62 Stat. 438 (1948) (amending statute to provide that term “employee” “does not include . . . any individual who, under the usual common-law rules applicable in determining the employer-employee relationship, has the status of an independent contractor”) (emphasis added); see also United States v. W. M. Webb, Inc., 397 U. S. 179, 183-188 (1970) (discussing congressional reaction to Silk).

To be sure, Congress did not, strictly speaking, “overrule” our interpretation of those statutes, since the Constitution invests the Judiciary, not the Legislature, with the final power to construe the law. But a principle of statutory construction can endure just so many legislative revisitations, and Reid’s presumption that Congress means an agency law definition for “employee” unless it clearly indicates otherwise signaled our abandonment of Silk’s emphasis on construing that term “ ‘in the light of the mischief to be corrected and the end to be attained.’” Silk, supra, at 713, quoting Hearst, supra, at 124.

At oral argument, Darden tried to subordinate Reid to Rutherford Food Corp. v. McComb, 331 U. S. 722 (1947), which adopted a broad reading of “employee” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). And amicus United States, while rejecting Darden’s position, also relied on Rutherford Food for the proposition that, when enacting ERISA, Congress must have intended a modified common-law definition of “employee” that would advance, in a way not defined, the Act’s “remedial purposes.” Brief for United States as Ami- cus Curiae 15-21. But Rutherfood Food supports neither position. The definition of “employee” in the FLSA evidently derives from the child labor statutes, see Rutherford Food, supra, at 728, and, on its face, goes beyond its ERISA counterpart. While the FLSA, like ERISA, defines an “employee” to include “any individual employed by an employer,” it defines the verb “employ” expansively to mean “suffer or permit to work.” 52 Stat. 1060, §3, codified at 29 U. S. C. §§ 203(e), (g). This latter definition, whose striking breadth we have previously noted, Rutherford Food, supra, at 728, stretches the meaning of “employee” to cover some parties who might not qualify as such under a strict application of traditional agency law principles. ERISA lacks any such provision, however, and the textual asymmetry between the two statutes precludes reliance on FLSA cases when construing ERISA’s concept of “employee.”

Quite apart from its inconsistency with our precedents, the Fourth Circuit’s analysis reveals an approach infected with circularity and unable to furnish predictable results. Applying the first element of its test, which ostensibly enquires into an employee’s “expectations,” the Court of Appeals concluded that Nationwide had “created a reasonable expectation on the ‘employees’ part that benefits would be paid to them in the future,” Darden, 796 F. 2d, at 706, by establishing “a comprehensive retirement benefits program for its insurance agents,” id., at 707. The court thought it was simply irrelevant that the forfeiture clause in Darden’s contract “limited” his expectation of receiving pension benefits, since “it is precisely that sort of employer-imposed condition on the employee’s anticipations that Congress intended to outlaw with the enactment of ERISA.” Id., at 707, n. 7 (emphasis added). Thus, the Fourth Circuit’s test would turn not on a claimant’s actual “expectations,” which the court effectively deemed inconsequential, ibid., but on his statutory entitlement to relief, which itself depends on his very status as an “employee.” This begs the question.

This circularity infects the test’s second prong as well, which considers the extent to which a claimant has relied on his “expectation” of benefits by “remaining for ‘long years,’ or a substantial period of time, in the ‘employer’s’ service, and by foregoing other significant means of providing for [his] retirement.” Id., at 706. While this enquiry is ostensibly factual, we have seen already that one of its objects may not be: to the extent that actual “expectations” are (as in Darden’s case) unnecessary to relief, the nature of a claimant’s required “reliance” is left unclear. Moreover, any en-quiry into “reliance,” whatever it might entail, could apparently lead to different results for claimants holding identical jobs and enrolled in identical plans. Because, for example, Darden failed to make much independent provision for his retirement, he satisfied the “reliance” prong of the Fourth Circuit’s test, see 922 F. 2d, at 206, whereas a more provident colleague who signed exactly the same contracts, but saved for a rainy day, might not.

Any such approach would severely compromise the capacity of companies like Nationwide to figure out who their “employees” are and what, by extension, their pension-fund obligations will be. To be sure, the traditional agency law criteria offer no paradigm of determinacy. But their application generally turns on factual variables within an employer’s knowledge, thus permitting categorical judgments about the “employee” status of claimants with similar job descriptions. Agency law principles comport, moreover, with our recent precedents and with the common understanding, reflected in those precedents, of the difference between an employee and an independent contractor.

HH H-I

While the Court of Appeals noted that “Darden most probably would not qualify as an employee” under traditional agency law principles, Darden, supra, at 705, it did not actually decide that issue. We therefore reverse the judgment and remand the case to that court for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

So ordered.

       The Court of Appeals cited Congress’s declaration that “many employees with long years of employment are losing anticipated retirement benefits,” that employee benefit plans “have become an important factor affecting the stability of employment and the successful development of industrial relations,” and that ERISA was necessary to “assur[e] the equitable character of such plans and their financial soundness.” 796 F. 2d, at 706, quoting 29 U. S. C. § 1001. None of these passages deals specifically with the scope of ERISA’s class of beneficiaries.

       The Court of Appeals also held that the Deferred Compensation Plan was a pension plan subject to regulation under ERISA, but that the Extended Earnings Plan was not. 922 F. 2d, at 208. We denied Darden’s cross-petition for certiorari, which sought review of that conclusion. 502 U. S. 906 (1991).

       As in Reid, we construe the term to incorporate “the general common law of agency, rather than ... the law of any particular State.” Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U. S. 730, 740 (1989).

       The National Labor Relations Act simply defined “employee” to mean (in relevant part) “any employee.” 49 Stat. 450 (1935). The Social Security Act defined the term to “include,” among other, unspecified occupations, “an officer of a corporation.” 49 Stat. 647.

       While both Darden and the United States cite a Department of Labor “Opinion Letter” as support for their separate positions, see Brief for Respondent 34-36, Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 16-18, neither suggests that we owe that letter’s legal conclusions any deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 844 (1984).


author: Justice Thomas Justice Stevens,

text:
    UNITED STATES v. WILSON
    No. 90-1745.
    Argued January 15, 1992
    Decided March 24, 1992

      Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Blackmun, O’Connoe, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which White, J., joined, post, p. 337.

      Amy L. Wax argued the cause for the United States. With her on the briefs were Solicitor General Starr, Assistant Attorney General Mueller, Deputy Solicitor General Bryson, and Joel M. Gershowitz.

      Henry A. Martin, by appointment of the Court, 502 U. S. 936, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Deborah S. Swettenam and Alan Morrison.

   Justice Thomas

delivered the opinion of the Court.

A defendant convicted of a federal crime has a right under 18 U. S. C. § 3585(b) to receive credit for certain time spent in official detention before his sentence begins. In this case, we must decide whether the District Court calculates the credit at the time of sentencing or whether the Attorney General computes it after the defendant has begun to serve his sentence.

I

In the summer and early fall of 1988, respondent Richard Wilson committed several crimes in Putnam County, Tennessee. The precise details of these crimes do not concern us here. It suffices to state that Tennessee authorities arrested Wilson on October 5, 1988, and held him in jail pending the outcome of federal and state prosecutions. After certain preliminary proceedings, Wilson eventually pleaded guilty to various federal and state criminal charges.

On November 29, 1989, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee sentenced Wilson to 96 months’ imprisonment for violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951. The District Court denied Wilson’s request for credit for time served during his presentence state custody. On December 12, 1989, a Tennessee trial court sentenced Wilson to several years’ imprisonment for robbery and two other felonies. In contrast to the District Court, the state court granted Wilson 429 days of credit toward his state sentence. Later that day, Tennessee authorities transferred Wilson to federal custody, and he began serving his federal sentence.

Wilson appealed the District Court’s refusal to give him credit for the time that he had spent in state custody. Reversing the District Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Wilson had a right to credit and that the District Court should have awarded it to him. 916 F. 2d 1115 (1990). We granted certiorari, 502 U. S. 807 (1991), and now reverse.

II

The Attorney General, through the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), has responsibility for imprisoning federal offenders. See 18 U. S. C. § 3621(a). From 1966 until 1987, a provision codified at 18 U. S. C. § 3568 (1982 ed.) required the Attorney General to award federal prisoners credit for certain time spent in jail prior to the commencement of their sentences. This provision, in part, stated:

“The Attorney General shall give any such person credit toward service of his sentence for any days spent in custody in connection with the offense or acts for which sentence was imposed.” Pub. L. 89-465, §4, 80 Stat. 217 (emphasis added).

The Attorney General implemented this provision by computing the amount of credit after taking custody of the sentenced federal offender. Although the federal courts could review the Attorney General’s determination, the sentencing court did not participate in computation of the credit. See, e. g., United States v. Morgan, 425 F. 2d 1388, 1389-1390 (CA5 1970).

In the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, 18 U. S. C. § 3551 et seq., which became effective in 1987, Congress rewrote § 3568 and recodified it at § 3585(b). Unlike its predecessor, § 3585(b) does not mention the Attorney General. Written in the passive voice, it states:

“A defendant shall be given credit toward the service of a term of imprisonment for any time he has spent in official detention prior to the date the sentence commences—
“(1) as a result of the offense for which the sentence was imposed; or
“(2) as a result of any other charge for which the defendant was arrested after the commission of the offense for which the sentence was imposed;
“that has not been credited against another sentence.” 18 U. S. C. § 3585(b) (emphasis added).

In describing the defendant’s right to receive jail-time credit in this manner, the provision has created doubt about whether district courts now may award credit when imposing a sentence. The question has significance in this case because the final clause of § 3585(b) allows a defendant to receive credit only for detention time “that has not been credited against another sentence.” When the District Court imposed Wilson’s 96-month sentence on November 29, 1989, Wilson had not yet received credit for his detention time from the Tennessee courts. However, by the time the Attorney General imprisoned Wilson on December 12, 1989, the Tennessee trial court had awarded Wilson 429 days of credit. As a result, Wilson could receive a larger credit if the statute permitted crediting at sentencing, and thus before the detention time had been credited against another sentence.

The United States argues that it is the Attorney General who computes the amount of the credit after the defendant begins his sentence and that the Court of Appeals erred in ordering the District Court to award credit to Wilson. Wilson counters that § 3585(b) authorizes the District Court to compute the amount of the credit at sentencing. We agree with the United States.

A

We do not accept Wilson’s argument that § 3585(b) authorizes a district court to award credit at sentencing. Section 3585(b) indicates that a defendant may receive credit against a sentence that “was imposed,” It also specifies that the amount of the credit depends on the time that the defendant “has spent” in official detention “prior to the date the sentence commences.” Congress’ use of a verb tense is significant in construing statutes. See, e. g., Otte v. United States, 419 U. S. 43, 49-50 (1974); Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, 63-64, n. 4 (1987). By using these verbs in the past and present perfect tenses, Congress has indicated that computation of the credit must occur after the defendant begins his sentence. A district court, therefore, cannot apply § 3585(b) at sentencing.

Federal defendants do not always begin to serve their sentences immediately. In this case, the District Court sentenced Wilson on November 29, 1989, but Wilson did not begin his sentence until December 12, 1989. At sentencing, the District Court only could have speculated about the amount of time that Wilson would spend in detention prior to the commencement of his sentence; the court did not know when the state-court proceedings would end or when the federal authorities would take Wilson into custody. Because § 3585(b) bases the credit on how much time a defendant “has spent” (not “will have spent”) prior to beginning his sentence, the District Court could not compute the amount of the credit at sentencing.

The final phrase of § 3585(b) confirms this interpretation. As noted above, it authorizes credit only for time that “has not been credited against another sentence.” Wilson argues that this phrase does not prevent him from receiving credit because his official detention “ha[d] not been credited” against the state sentence when the District Court imposed the federal sentence. Under this logic, however, if the District Court had sentenced Wilson a few weeks later than it did, he would not have received credit under § 3585(b). This interpretation of the statute would make the award of credit arbitrary, a result not to be presumed lightly. See United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S. 576, 580 (1981) (absurd results are to be avoided). We can imagine no reason why Congress would desire the presentence detention credit, which determines how much time an offender spends in prison, to depend on the timing of his sentencing. For these reasons, we conclude that § 3585(b) does not authorize a district court to compute the credit at sentencing.

B

We agree with the United States that the Attorney General must continue to compute the credit under § 3585(b) as he did under the former §3568. When Congress writes a statute in the passive voice, it often fails to indicate who must take a required action. This silence can make the meaning of a statute somewhat difficult to ascertain. See, e. g., E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Train, 430 U. S. 112, 128 (1977); Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 102-103 (1979). Yet, even though § 3585(b) no longer mentions the Attorney General, we do not see how he can avoid determining the amount of a defendant’s jail-time credit.

After a district court sentences a federal offender, the Attorney General, through BOP, has the responsibility for administering the sentence. See 18 U. S. C. § 3621(a) (“A person who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment. . . shall be committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons until the expiration of the term imposed”). To fulfill this duty, BOP must know how much of the sentence the offender has left to serve. Because the offender has a right to certain jail-time credit under § 3585(b), and because the district court cannot determine the amount of the credit at sentencing, the Attorney General has no choice but to make the determination as an administrative matter when imprisoning the defendant.

Crediting jail time against federal sentences long has operated in this manner. After Congress enacted § 3568 in 1966, BOP developed detailed procedures and guidelines for determining the credit available to prisoners. See Federal Prison System Program Statement No. 5880.24 (Sept. 5, 1979) and Federal Bureau of Prisons Operations Memorandum No. EMS DM 154-89 (Oct. 23, 1989), Apps. B and C to Brief for United States (stating BOP’s procedures for computing jail-time credit determinations); see also United States v. Lucas, 898 F. 2d 1554 (CA11 1990). Federal regulations have afforded prisoners administrative review of the computation of their credits, see 28 CFR §§542.10-542.16 (1990); Lucas, supra, at 1556, and prisoners have been able to seek judicial review of these computations after exhausting their administrative remedies, see United States v. Bayless, 940 F. 2d 300, 304-305 (CA8 1991); United States v. Flanagan, 868 F. 2d 1544, 1546 (CA11 1989); United States v. Martinez, 837 F. 2d 861, 865-866 (CA9 1988). Congress’ conversion of an active sentence in § 3568 into a passive sentence in § 3585(b) strikes us as a rather slim ground for presuming an intention to change these well-established procedures. “It is not lightly to be assumed that Congress intended to depart from a long established policy.” Robertson v. Railroad Labor Bd., 268 U. S. 619, 627 (1925).

C

Wilson argues that our conclusion conflicts with the familiar maxim that, when Congress alters the words of a statute, it must intend to change the statute’s meaning. See Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23-24 (1983). He asserts that, by removing the explicit reference to the Attorney General when it enacted § 3585(b), Congress expressed a desire to remove the Attorney General from the process of computing sentences. Otherwise, Wilson contends, Congress would have had no reason to modify the provision as it did. We have no difficulty with the general presumption that Congress contemplates a change whenever it amends a statute. In this case, however, we find that presumption overcome by our conclusions that the District Court cannot perform the necessary calculation at the time of sentencing and that the Attorney General, in implementing the defendant’s sentence, cannot avoid computing the credit.

We candidly acknowledge that we do not know what happened to the reference to the Attorney General during the revision. We do know that Congress entirely rewrote § 3568 when it changed it to its present form in § 3585(b). It rearranged its clauses, rephrased its central idea in the passive voice, and more than doubled its length. In view of these changes, and because any other interpretation would require us to stretch the meaning of the words that § 3585(b) now includes, we think it likely that the former reference to the Attorney General was simply lost in the shuffle.

Our interpretation of § 3585(b), however, does not render the 1987 revision meaningless. Congress altered §3568 in at least three ways when it enacted § 3585(b). First, Congress replaced the term “custody” with the term “official detention.” Second, Congress made clear that a defendant could not receive a double credit for his detention time. Third, Congress enlarged the class of defendants eligible to receive credit. Under the old law, a defendant could receive credit only for time spent in custody in connection with “the offense ... for which sentence was imposed.” Under the new law, a defendant may receive credit both for this time and for time spent in official detention in connection with “any other charge for which the defendant was arrested after the commission of the offense for which the sentence was imposed.” In light of these revisions, and for the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the Attorney General may continue to compute the amount of the credit. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Reversed.

Justice Stevens,

with whom Justice White joins, dissenting.

Today’s rigid interpretation of a remedial statute is not supported by the text, legislative history, or underlying policies of the statute. In Crandon v. United States, 494 U. S. 152, 158 (1990), this Court said that “[i]n determining the meaning of [a] statute, we look not only to the particular statutory language, but to the design of the statute as a whole and to its object and policy.” The Court has failed to do this today. The statute at issue, 18 U. S. C. § 3585(b), gives the convicted defendant a right to have his term of imprisonment shortened by the amount of time he has already spent in either federal or state custody as a result of his offense, provided that the time has not already been credited against another sentence.

The defendant’s right to the full credit authorized by the statute is obviously an important right. Both the Attorney General and the sentencing judge have a duty to respect and protect that right. Moreover, it is clear that in the event there is a dispute between the parties over the right to a credit, the dispute must be resolved by the court. No one contends that the Attorney General has unreviewable discretion to determine the appropriate credit in any case.

In most cases, the calculation of the credit is a routine, ministerial task that will not give rise to any dispute. Occasionally, however, as this case demonstrates, there may be a legitimate difference of opinion either about the meaning of the statute or about the relevant facts. Such a dispute must, of course, be resolved by the judge. The only question that remains, then, is when the judge shall resolve the issue — at the time of sentencing, when the defendant is represented by counsel, or at some later date, after the defendant has begun to serve his sentence.

The credit at issue in this case was a period of almost 14 months that respondent had spent in state custody before he entered into a plea agreement with the federal prosecutor. Prior to the amendment of § 3585(b), which became effective in 1987, the statute — at least as construed by the Sixth Circuit where this case arose — did not authorize a credit for time spent in state custody. See United States v. Blankenship, 733 F. 2d 433, 434 (1984). Consistent with that pre-amendment practice, the District Court denied respondent’s request for credit for the 14 months that he had spent in state custody. There are two points that emerge from that ruling: First, the District Court erroneously construed the amended statute, and second, the legal question that the District Court decided was ripe for decision at the time of sentencing.

In its opinion today, the Court emphasizes the fact that the state court later awarded respondent credit for his 14 months in pretrial detention, arguing that he therefore would not have been entitled to a federal credit if the federal determination had been made after the state sentence was imposed. See ante, at 338, 334. This argument is misleading for three reasons. First, if the Federal District Court had granted respondent’s request, it seems unlikely that the state court would also have allowed the credit. Second, although the Court assumes that the risk of a double credit could be avoided by postponing the credit determination until after the convicted defendant begins to serve his federal sentence, that assumption is erroneous because state proceedings frequently do not terminate until after a defendant begins to serve his federal sentence or, indeed, in some cases, until after the defendant has been released from federal custody. Third, when a correct federal sentence, including a correct credit for pretrial custody, has been imposed, the subsequent action of a state court concerning the amount of punishment for any state offenses the defendant may have committed is purely a matter of state concern.

In this case, for example, if the Federal Sentencing Guidelines had prescribed a sentence of less than 14 months, and if the District Court, or indeed the Attorney General, had awarded respondent the proper credit, and therefore released him from custody, it would be bizarre to conclude that the Federal Government should rearrest him if a Tennessee court subsequently decided to give him the same credit because he would already have served almost 14 months in custody, thus fulfilling his federal sentence. The possibility that a state court will allow the same credit that a federal court allows exists whenever a state sentence is imposed after the federal credit determination is made, whether it is made by the trial judge or by the Attorney General and whether it is made at the sentencing hearing or at the commencement of the federal sentence. The likelihood that the state court will allow a second credit after a federal credit has been allowed seems remote no matter when or by whom the federal determination is made. More importantly, the existence of a hypothetical risk of double credits in rare cases involving overlapping state and federal jurisdiction is not a sufficient reason for refusing to give effect to the plain language of the statute in cases in which no such problem is presented.

I

The Court’s entire analysis rests on an incorrect premise. The Court assumes that the statute mandates one of two starkly different procedures: Either the credit determination must always be made by the Attorney General after the defendant has begun to serve his sentence, or it must always be made by the sentencing judge at the time of sentencing. Neither of these procedures is compelled by the statutory text. An ordinary reading of the statute’s plain language (“[a] defendant shall be given credit toward the service of a term of imprisonment . . .”) suggests that the judge has ample authority to delegate the task of calculating the credit to a probation officer or to the prosecutor, subject, of course, to judicial review, or to make it himself in the first instance. Surely there is nothing in the statutory text that purports to deprive the judge of discretion to follow whichever procedure seems best suited to the particular facts of a given case. The text, which uses the passive voice, does not specify who will make the decision about jail credit. Certainly we should give effect to Congress’ choice of words, and understand that the text, as written, does not identify a particular decisionmaker, and therefore, the appropriate decisionmaker may be either the judge or the Attorney General depending on the circumstances.

The statute does indicate that the decision should be made after “the sentence was imposed” and that the credit shall include time spent in official detention “prior to the date the sentence commences” even if some of that time is after the sentencing hearing. If, as is true in most cases, the convicted defendant begins to serve his sentence immediately after it is imposed, it is perfectly consistent with the text in such cases to have the judge determine the credit at the conclusion of the sentencing hearing. Even if the commencement of the sentence is postponed until a later date, an order specifying the amount of the credit to which the defendant was then entitled, and directing that an additional credit be given if appropriate, would also conform to the statutory text. The statute does not prohibit the judge from resolving the issue at any time after the sentence has been imposed. In short, the text does not mandate any particular procedure that must be followed in every case.

Although Congress’ use of the passive voice clearly leaves open the question of who the decisionmaker is with respect to jail credit, the placement of §3585 in Subchapter D-Imprisonment, in which “the court” is called upon to determine the sentence, §3581, impose the sentence, §3582, include a term of supervised release, §3583, and determine whether the term is to run concurrently or consecutively in the case of multiple sentences, § 3584, clearly points to the judge as the person who is to calculate credit, § 3585, in the first instance. Congress could have made this perfectly clear by repeating the phrase “the court” in § 3585, but that was made almost unnecessary by placing § 3585 in a subchap-ter in which the court clearly had responsibility for every action that needed to be taken, but could also delegate actions to the appropriate authorities.

I — 1 H-4

The Court’s textual argument amounts to nothing more than an assertion that because sometimes all issues relating to the credit determination will not be ripe for decision at the time of sentencing, the trial court never has authority to make the credit determination even in cases that are ripe for decision. Because this reasoning is so plainly flawed, the Court’s holding must rest on its understanding of the legislative history. The history on which the Court relies includes no relevant comments in the Committee Reports or the debates. It consists only of the fact that prior to 1987 the statute directed the Attorney General to make the credit determination. See ante, at 331-332. It seems to me, however, that that smidgen of history merely raises the issue without answering it. The fact that Congress carefully rewrote the relevant section in a way that makes the defendant’s right significantly more valuable tends to support the conclusion that the changes in language were deliberate and should not be ignored. See Union Bank v. Wolas, 502 U. S. 151 (1991); United States Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U. S. 166, 179 (1980). Recognizing the district court’s authority to enter an appropriate order at the conclusion of the sentencing hearing is entirely consistent with a congressional purpose to enhance the value of this right.

> — I HH

No statutory policy would be adversely affected by recognizing the district court’s authority to make the initial credit determination in appropriate cases, and in fact, two important policies would be served. First, as the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has observed, see n. 10, supra, allowing the district court, in its discretion, to compute the credit when the sentence is imposed furthers the interest in providing prisoners with prompt, accurate, and precise information about the time they must spend in prison. This policy is expressly identified in the Senate Report describing the value of a procedure “whereby the offender, the victim, and society all know the prison release date at the time of the initial sentencing by the court, subject to minor adjustments based on prison behavior called ‘good time.’ ” S. Rep. No. 98-225, p. 46 (1983).

Second, and of even greater importance, allowing the district court to make the credit determination furthers the interest in uniform and evenhanded sentencing that is the centerpiece of the entire Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. When there are disputed issues that must be resolved by a judge, an adversarial proceeding, in which the parties are represented by counsel and the proceeding takes place in open court and on the record, is the best guarantee of a fair and accurate decision. The convicted defendant is represented by trial counsel at the time of sentencing, but usually must fend for himself after he is incarcerated. Committing the decision to the Attorney General after the defendant has begun to serve his sentence, particularly if he must serve his sentence in some facility remote from the district of conviction, can only minimize the effective participation of defense counsel. Indeed, it may generate meritless pro se claims for credit that could be avoided by prompt consideration at sentencing, as well as complicate and delay the disposition of meritorious claims. A flexible approach that allows the judge to decide when, and how, the credit determination should be made is fully consistent with the purposes of the statute and with its text.

For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

       Title 18 U. S. C. § 3686(b) provides:
      “(b) Credit for Prior Custody — A defendant shall be given credit toward the service of a term of imprisonment for any time he has spent in official detention prior to the date the sentence commences—
      “(1) as a result of the offense for which the sentence was imposed; or
      “(2) as a result of any other charge for which the defendant was arrested after the commission of the offense for which the sentence was imposed;
      “that has not been credited against another sentence.”

       Prior to 1987, when the statute assigned the initial responsibility for determining the length of the credit to the Attorney General, it was settled that his determination was subject to judicial review after the prisoner exhausted his administrative remedies. See Chua Han Mow v. United States, 730 F. 2d 1308, 1313 (CA9 1984), cert. denied, 470 U. S. 1031 (1985).

       As respondent acknowledged, “the arithmetical task of figuring out the exact date an offender will finish serving his sentence” “is essentially an administrative ministerial function.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 4; see also id., at 10, 21, 52.

         Typically the dispute centers on whether the questioned time was “official detention” or whether the time has already been “credited” to another sentence. See, e. g., United States v. Beston, 936 F. 2d 361 (CA8 1991) (per curiam); United States v. Chalker, 915 F. 2d 1254 (CA9 1990); United States v. Woods, 888 F. 2d 653 (CA10 1989), cert. denied, 494 U. S. 1006 (1990).

      In the District Court, the Government did not take any position with respect to respondent’s request for jail credit, stating that “as to defense’s petition that the time spent incarcerated on state charges for the crimes which occurred prior to the federal conspiracy, that’s up to the court and the government takes no position as to that.” Tr. 86. In the Court of Appeals, however, the Government contended that respondent was not entitled to the credit. See Brief for Appellee in No. 89-6583 (CA6), pp. 14-15.

       Before § 3585 became effective, 18 U. S. C. § 3568 (1982 ed.) governed credit for presentence time spent in official detention.

       See also United States v. Garcia-Gutierrez, 835 F. 2d 585, 586 (CA5 1988) (construing former § 3568).

       “IT IS THE JUDGMENT OF THIS COURT THAT defendant is hereby committed to the custody of the United States Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a term of:
      “Ninety six months (96), which includes an upward departure of thirty-three months. Defendant is unable to pay a fine, or the cost of his incarceration or supervised release. Defendant will not be given any credit for the time spent in state custody.” Record, Doc. No. 56.
      The Government defended this ruling in its brief to the Court of Appeals, arguing:
      “Although there is some authority that a defendant is entitled to credit for time served in state custody once a federal detainer has been lodged, the state confinement must be the product of action by federal law enforcement officials. United States v. Garcia-Gutierrez, 836 F. 2d 585, 586 (6th Cir. 1988); United States v. Harris, 876 F. 2d 1502, 1506 (11th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, [493 U. S. 1005] (1989). The federal detainer must be the exclusive reason a prisoner in state custody has not been released on bail. United States v. Blankenship, 733 F. 2d 433, 434 (6th Cir. 1984).” Brief for Appellee in No. 89-6583, pp. 14-15.

       Those Courts of Appeals that have recognized the shared role of the sentencing judge and the Attorney General in the decision to award jail credit include the Ninth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit. See, e. g., United States v. Chalker, 915 F. 2d, at 1258; United States v. Beston, 936 F. 2d, at 363.

       “Instead, we conclude that by failing to specify to whom such power was vested, Congress intended the Attorney General and the district courts to have concurrent authority to grant credit for time served. As a practical matter, our holding will give to the district court, in its discretion, the initial opportunity to grant credit for time previously served. We believe this result to be fully compatible with Congress’ intent in passing the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The Senate Report, in discussing the sentencing provisions of the Act, specifically decried the lack of certainty and finality under the pre-Guidelines sentencing system to the effect that ‘prisoners often do not really know how long they will spend in prison until the very day they are released.’ Crime Control Act, S. Rep. No. 225, 98th Cong., 2d Sess. at 49, reprinted in 1984 U. S. Code Cong. & Admin. News at 3232. Allowing the district court, in its discretion, to compute credit time when the sentence is imposed furthers this congressional purpose by informing one convicted of a crime at the outset of their sentence precisely how long they will spend in prison.” United States v. Chalker, 915 F. 2d, at 1258 (footnotes omitted).

       Certainly there are some credit issues that can arise that are ripe for decision at the time of the sentencing hearing. What constitutes “official detention” is one such issue. It is also an issue on which the Courts of Appeals are currently divided. For example, in Moreland v. United States, 932 F. 2d 690, 692 (1991), the Eighth Circuit agreed with Moreland that he should receive credit for the time he spent at a community treatment center; however, in United States v. Insley, 927 F. 2d 185, 186 (1991), the Fourth Circuit held that Insley’s conditions of release did not constitute custody for purposes of credit; in Ramsey v. Brennan, 878 F. 2d 995, 996 (1989), the Seventh Circuit would not credit the time that Ramsey spent in a halfway house while awaiting trial, and in United States v. Woods, 888 F. 2d, at 656, the Tenth Circuit held that Woods was not entitled to credit for the time he spent at a residential treatment center when he was out on bond. In each of these cases, the issue was ripe for decision at the sentencing hearing.

       As the Senate Report made clear, one objective of the Act was to redress the situation in which “prisoners often do not really know how long they will spend in prison until the very day they are released.” S. Rep. No. 98-225, at 49.

       Several States have recognized the advantages of assigning to the court the task of calculating jail credit. See Fla. Stat. § 921.161 (1991) (“A sentence of imprisonment shall not begin to run before the date it is imposed, but the court imposing a sentence shall allow a defendant credit for all of the time he spent in the county jail before sentence. The credit must be for a specified period of time and shall be provided for in the sentence”); see also Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 2900.5(d) (West Supp. 1992); Mass. Gen. Laws § 279:33A (1990).

       The information required for the sentencing judge to make a credit determination could easily become part of the information that is routinely provided to the judge in the presentence report. Such a report already contains the convicted offender’s prior criminal history, which includes much of the information necessary to decide whether he is eligible for credit for time in custody. The report could contain the amount of jail credit the person is entitled to, and if there are other sentences pending or unserved, a recommendation whether the current sentence should be concurrent or consecutive to any prior sentences.