764
Breyer, J., dissenting
viously imposed upon] offenders with similar histories, convicted of similar crimes, committed under similar circumstances," under the pre-existing indeterminate system of sentencing. S. Rep. No. 98-225, p. 38 (1983). See also Mistretta, supra, at 366.
At the same time, Congress said that the Commission, when reducing disparity, should not "sacrific[e] proportionality"—the principle that criminal conduct of greater severity should be punished more harshly than less serious conduct. United States Sentencing Commission, Supplementary Report on the Initial Sentencing Guidelines and Policy Statements 13 (June 1987) (Supplementary Report). See also 18 U. S. C. § 3553(a)(2)(A) (sentences should "reflect the seriousness of the offense" and "provide just punishment"); 28 U. S. C. §§ 994(a)(2) and (g). This effort to achieve proportionality required the Commission to identify those factors that make criminal conduct more or less serious and provide a way for those factors to be taken into account in the Guidelines. Yet because the list of relevant sentencing factors is long, and their interaction impossibly complex, the Commission had to strike a compromise between the need for proportionality on the one hand and the need for Guidelines that were simple enough to be administered. USSG ch. 1, pt. A3, p. s. The upshot is a Guidelines system that balances various, sometimes conflicting, general goals, including reduction of disparity, proportionality, and administrability.
The Guidelines divide sentencing factors into two basic categories: "offense" characteristics and "offender" characteristics. See generally USSG § 1B1.1. The Guidelines first look to the characteristics of the "offense." The Guidelines tell a sentencing judge to consider the behavior in which an offender engaged when he committed the crime of which he was convicted. They assign a number—called a "Base Offense Level"—to the behavior that constituted the crime itself. (For example, they assign the Base Offense Level 20 to robbery. Id., § 2B3.1(a).) They next tell the
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