The survey data were collected in the first few months of 1994. The public's views are represented by the sentences given by a national probability sample of adult Americans to short vignettes, each describing a convicted offender and the crime for which the felon was convicted. The vignettes were constructed by using the factorial survey approach, a blending of experimental design and sample survey methods. The survey included the major factors identified in the guidelines, so that there were close parallels between the guidelines and the vignettes. Three major themes emerged from the survey findings. First, there was a fair amount of agreement between sentences prescribed in the guidelines and those desired by the members of the sample. Second, there was little, if any, evidence that there were subgroups within the American population with radically different views about sentencing norms. There were few who did not view homicide or kidnapping as serious crimes, and there were few who would punish marijuana users with 10 or more years of imprisonment. The third major theme concerns whether the patterning of respondents' sentences constituted evidence of the existence of a normative structure concerning punishment for criminals. The authors conclude that the preponderance of evidence favors the view that there is a set of norms that guided both the respondents and the commission to converge on approximately the same set of sentences. Extensive tables and figures, 32 references, appended dimensions and levels, survey questionnaire, and "standard" vignettes used in the survey, as well as a subject index