What rules must the judge follow when ordering discretionary conditions on my supervised release?

To add a discretionary condition to your Supervised Release, the judge must find that that the conditions are reasonably related to the following factors:

    The nature and circumstances of the offense;
    Your personal history and characteristics;
    Reflecting the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law and to provide just punishment for the offense;
    Adequately deterring future criminal conduct;
    Protecting the public from further crimes committed by you; and/or
    Providing you with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner.[970]

Furthermore, if the additional discretionary conditions deprive you of liberty or property, the judge must find that the conditions are reasonably necessary to:

    Reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense;
    Adequately deter future criminal conduct;
    Protect the public from further crimes committed by you; and/or
    Provide you with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner.[971]

If a judge is going to impose a special condition, then both of the following requirements must be met:

    The condition must have a reasonable relationship to the factors listed above on PG. 230 AND
    The condition must be reasonably necessary to achieve the purposes listed above on PG. 230.

If you object to the discretionary condition, it is the federal government’s burden to show that the discretionary condition is justified.[972]

These are the same legal standards and rules that applied to setting discretionary conditions for people on federal probation (see below for information about discretionary conditions).

  1. 970

    See 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b) (referring to 18 U.S.C. §§ 3553(a)(1), (a)(2)).

  2. 971

    See 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b) (referring to 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)).

  3. 972

    U.S. v. Weber, 451 F.3d 553 (9th Cir. 2006) (“We have long held that a term of supervised release is part of a defendant’s sentence . . . and, like imprisonment, restricts a defendant’s liberty and fundamental rights . . .. As a result, when the government seeks to restrict a defendant’s liberty through a term of supervised release, it shoulders the burden of proving that a particular condition of supervised release involves no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary to serve the goals of supervised release.”).