Sentencing documents from four representative U.S. District Courts for the year 1989 were studied and tabulated. Results show that both trial and appellate judges are spending more and more time deciding sentencing issues and, at the same time, are having less and less to say about what the sentence should be. It is recommended that changes in the guidelines and in the sentencing process should be made to improve the efficiency and fairness of the system. The Sentencing Reform Act should be amended to require the sentences be based only on conduct charged in an indictment or information and admitted to in a guilty plea or proved beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. The number of offense levels in the guidelines' sentencing table should be reduced without changing the minimum and maximum sentences now permitted by the guidelines. District court judges should be authorized to give a sentence less than that mandated by the guidelines without a motion from the prosecutor on a finding that an offender has given substantial assistance to the government. The issue of systemic disparity should be carefully studied, particularly with respect to the impact of the guidelines on the sentencing of black and Hispanic males. 256 footnotes and 9 tables