Cite as: 514 U. S. 499 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
attenuated risk of affecting a prisoner's actual term of confinement by making it more difficult for him to make a persuasive case for early release, but that fact alone cannot end the matter for ex post facto purposes.4
Indeed, contrary to the approach advocated by respondent, we have long held that the question of what legislative adjustments "will be held to be of sufficient moment to transgress the constitutional prohibition" must be a matter of "degree." Beazell, 269 U. S., at 171. In evaluating the constitutionality of the 1981 amendment, we must determine whether it produces a sufficient risk of increasing the measure of punishment attached to the covered crimes.5 We
have previously declined to articulate a single "formula" for identifying those legislative changes that have a sufficient effect on substantive crimes or punishments to fall within the constitutional prohibition, see ibid., and we have no occasion to do so here. The amendment creates only the most speculative and attenuated possibility of producing the prohibited effect of increasing the measure of punishment for covered crimes, and such conjectural effects are insufficient under any threshold we might establish under the Ex Post Facto Clause. See Dobbert, supra, at 294 (refusing to accept "speculation" that the effective punishment under a new
4 The dissent proposes a line between those measures that deprive prisoners of a parole hearing and those that "make it more difficult for prisoners to obtain release." Post, at 524. But this arbitrary line has absolutely no basis in the Constitution. If a delay in parole hearings raises ex post facto concerns, it is because that delay effectively increases a prisoner's term of confinement, and not because the hearing itself has independent constitutional significance. Other adjustments to mechanisms surrounding the sentencing process should be evaluated under the same standard.
5 Contrary to the dissent's suggestion, see post, at 519, we express no view as to the constitutionality of any of a number of other statutes that might alter the timing of parole hearings under circumstances different from those present here.
509
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