700
Opinion of the Court
of supervised release "imposes punishment for defendants' new offenses for violating the conditions of their supervised release." United States v. Page, 131 F. 3d 1173, 1176 (1997). On this theory, that is, if the violation of the conditions of supervised release occurred after the enactment of § 3583(h), as Johnson's did, the new law could be given effect without applying it to events before its enactment.
While this understanding of revocation of supervised release has some intuitive appeal, the Government disavows it, and wisely so in view of the serious constitutional questions that would be raised by construing revocation and reimprisonment as punishment for the violation of the conditions of supervised release. Although such violations often lead to reimprisonment, the violative conduct need not be criminal and need only be found by a judge under a preponderance of the evidence standard, not by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. See 18 U. S. C. § 3583(e)(3) (1988 ed., Supp. V). Where the acts of violation are criminal in their own right, they may be the basis for separate prosecution, which would raise an issue of double jeopardy if the revocation of supervised release were also punishment for the same offense. Treating postrevocation sanctions as part of the penalty for the initial offense, however (as most courts have done), avoids these difficulties. See, e. g., United States v. Wyatt, 102 F. 3d 241, 244-245 (CA7 1996) (rejecting double jeopardy challenge on ground that sanctions for violating the conditions of supervised release are part of the original sentence); United States v. Beals, 87 F. 3d 854, 859-860 (CA7 1996) (noting that punishment for noncriminal violations must be justified by reference to original crimes), overruled on other grounds, United States v. Withers, 128 F. 3d 1167 (1997); United States v. Meeks, 25 F. 3d 1117, 1123 (CA2 1994) (noting absence of constitutional procedural protections in revocation proceedings). Cf. Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 782 (1973) ("Probation revocation . . . is not a stage of a crimi-
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