A California sentencing guidelines commission has been proposed whose major goals would be to (1) provide uniformity in sentencing practices; (2) place greater emphasis on serious and career criminals and to place lesser emphasis on less serious offenders; and (3) when possible, establish sentencing guidelines consistent with prison capacity. Conference participants included authorities from Minnesota and Washington State, two of the three States with State sentencing commissions in place. A sentencing commission would help California deal with several problems associated with its current determinate sentencing structure: prison overcrowding, ad hoc sentencing legislation, inadequate attention to the cost implications of sentencing policies, and a lack of monitoring of the impact of sentencing policies on criminal justice agencies and the community. Representatives of the sentencing commissions of Minnesota and Washington discussed the development of their programs. They criticized the California proposal for instituting a commission emphasizing current sentencing practices as the basis for guidelines, pointing out that current sentencing practices are at the heart of California's prison overcrowding problem. Appendixes.