Every State has created new intermediate sanctions in recent years; nearly half the States have, have had, or are considering having sentencing guidelines. Guidelines can reduce sentencing disparities, including race, gender, and geographical disparities; produce changes in statewide sentencing patterns; and coordinate sentencing policies and corrections resources. Well-managed intermediate sanctions can scale the severity of the punishment to crime seriousness and can save money. Some research also suggest that intermediate sanctions have positive effects on offenders' participation in treatment. However, these aims are often frustrated by judges' decisions to use intermediate sanctions for offenders who differ from those for whom programs are designed. As a result, some States are now incorporating intermediate sanctions into sentencing guidelines. A number of concepts and mechanisms are indicating promise as a means to that end. The promising concepts include purposes at sentencing and parsimony. The mechanisms include zones of discretion, categorical exceptions, and dispositional presumptions. These approaches, singly or together, represent modest incremental steps toward creating comprehensive sentencing systems that incorporate confinement and nonconfinement sanctions and attempt to achieve reasonable consistency in sentencing while allowing judges to take account of meaningful differences between cases. Figures, table, and 56 references (Author abstract modified)