Specifically, the analysis examined the characteristics of and the offenses committed by the offenders in the sample, the relationship between the characteristics of the offenders and the sentences they received, the factors that relate to whether an offender successfully completes his/her sentence, and the rate at which offenders who had been sentenced for one crime later are charged with or convicted of another crime. The analysis involved the drawing of a random sample from those offenders for whom presentence investigations were completed in 1979. This population was chosen because these offenders had time to serve their sentence, be discharged, and recidivate (if they were going to do so), and 1979 was the first full year of a uniform statewide community-based corrections program. The most important findings of the study were that the recidivism risk of a group of offenders can be accurately assessed with existing tools, and the corrections program to which an offender is sentenced does not affect recidivism rates for some types of offenders but does affect recidivism rates for other. Recommendations derived from this sentencing and recidivism analysis are intended to increase the use of recidivism risk assessment in the sentencing of convicted felons and serious misdemeanants by requiring this information to be provided to judges and conducting ongoing monitoring to validate and modify the recidivism risk assessment tool. The appendixes contain offender characteristics used in risk assessment and a breakdown of the sample by offender categories. For other volumes of the evaluation, see NCJ 92298-99.