In the vast majority of felony cases, supervised release is a common accompaniment to a federal criminal conviction. The period of supervised release for the most serious felonies is five years and three years for less serious felonies. Once released from prison, the defendant becomes subject to supervision by the Office of Probation, which manages the conditions set at sentencing, including requirements related to criminal activity, restitution, and rehabilitation. Violations can result in rearrest and return to prison.
Supervised release is not mandatory in the vast majority of instances. Yet, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, in fiscal year 2025, 82% of people sentenced to federal prison had a term of supervised release imposed. In some federal districts, 100% of defendants faced a term of supervised release. However, the Sentencing Commission reports that only approximately 22% of supervised release impositions were mandated by statute, largely in relation to violent crimes. The numbers alone raise the question of why it is viewed that non-violent, and in many instances, white-collar financial crimes are deemed to require years of supervision after incarceration.
The law surrounding supervised release further brings such questions into sharp focus. The purpose of supervised release is not to punish the defendant, as with a prison sentence, but to assist with the defendant’s rehabilitation and transition back into the community after incarceration. Supervision is also intended to prevent reoffending or recidivism.
Fraud is a major white-collar offense category, and the Sentencing Commission reports that a substantial minority of white-collar defendants, likely in the 30-40% range, are repeat offenders. But does even that figure justify the elaborate system of supervision in non-violent, white-collar cases?
For example, a defendant might struggle with substance or gambling addiction, while the underlying crime is insider trading or health care fraud. Yet, at least one study, published in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, shows that white-collar defendants have a rate of substance abuse well below that of defendants convicted of other forms of non-violent theft. So, does substance abuse explain the frequent imposition of supervised release in nonviolent white-collar cases?
Maybe the answer is simple: As implied by the U.S. Sentencing Commission data, courts have become so accustomed to imposing periods of supervised release that we have ceased to ask when it is actually appropriate in light of its policy purposes, or the extent to which the mechanism can potentially be abused by those managing it when those questions are not explored in each instance.
United States v. Robert Sabet, 21-cr-140(EK), a matter recently resolved in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, underscores the infirmities of the supervised release mechanism when the government and the Office of Probation are less than thoughtful about its application.
Sabet was a trained and licensed pharmacist in New York who ultimately owned and operated a string of independent pharmacies. The businesses operated largely by paying their customers cash “gifts” and medical professionals bribes in exchange for prescriptions, in violation of federal health care laws. Sabet was alleged to have continued the illicit operation, and in March 2021, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to pay health care kickbacks. In April 2022, Sabet pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.
Sabet also had a serious drug addiction; his drugs of choice were fentanyl and cocaine. There were no acts of violence in Sabet’s history, including any associated with his drug use. While on bond before sentencing, he repeatedly failed mandatory drug tests due to drug use, and his bond was eventually revoked.
Upon release from prison, Sabet obtained employment, primarily as a lab technician in a pharmacy. However, he continued to test positive for drugs, at times manipulating his tests to conceal potential positive results. Even though Sabet agreed to outpatient and then inpatient treatment, the government and probation held him in violation of his terms of supervised release, namely his so-called non-compliance with refraining from drug use.
For these violations, the government requested that the court impose a substantial period of additional incarceration and additional years of supervised release. By this point, it had been years since Sabet served his prison sentence for health care fraud, and his two years of supervised release had ended over six months earlier. Under the notion of delayed revocation, however, the government and probation can hold a violation hearing if a warrant or summons was served during the period of supervised release.
Ultimately, Sabet was sentenced to time served on the violation(s). He had been remanded into custody before the hearing for failure to inform his federal probation officer that he had changed jobs. Despite the strong outcome for Sabet, the case underscores critical questions about how this mechanism of the federal criminal system functions.
First, supervised release is not meant to last indefinitely. Once a defendant has completed a prison sentence, if supervised release is imposed, it is meant to occur for a specific period of time. Even then, where are the checks and balances to help ensure that supervised release is imposed only in situations that warrant the costs inherent in the system and that it effectively serves its policy purpose?
In situations where the defendant, years after having served time for their underlying offense, is struggling with substance abuse or gambling addiction, is hauling the defendant repeatedly back to court on those bases (under the guise of violations of supervised release) an appropriate use of the court system? Hardly. Such use of the supervised release mechanism turns federal courtrooms into general hospitals ill-equipped to cure general societal problems.
