712
Opinion of the Court
(1999) (following revocation of parole, Sentencing Commission will determine whether reparole is warranted); O'Neil, supra, at 299; United States Parole Comm'n v. Williams, 54 F. 3d 820, 824 (CADC 1995) (noting "the established pre-Guidelines sentencing principle that parole is available unless expressly precluded" (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)).12 Thus, "revocation" of parole followed by further imprisonment was not a mere termination of a limited liberty that a defendant could experience only once per conviction, and it is fair to suppose that in the absence of any textual bar "revocation" of parole's replacement, supervised release, was meant to leave open the possibility of further supervised release, as well.
As seen already, "revoke" is no such bar, and we find no other. The proceeding that follows a violation of the conditions of supervised release is not, to be sure, a precise reenactment of the initial sentencing. Section 3583(e)(3) limits the possible prison term to the duration of the term of supervised release originally imposed. (If less than the maximum has been imposed, a court presumably may, before revoking the term, extend it pursuant to § 3583(e)(2); this would allow the term of imprisonment to equal the term of supervised release authorized for the initial offense.) The new prison term is limited further according to the gravity of the original offense. See § 3583(e)(3). But nothing in these specific
analysis of supervised release drawn into question by the fact that courts could not, for violations of probation, impose imprisonment followed by probation. Probation, unlike supervised release, was an alternative to imprisonment. Courts did not have the power to impose both at the original sentencing, so their inability to do so at subsequent sentencings is no surprise.
12 The dissent seems to misconstrue our discussion of pre-Guidelines practice, see post, at 724-726, claiming that the practice is unilluminating because the possibility of parole inhered in any prison sentence. But our point simply is that, metaphysics aside, Congress gave no indication that it thought supervised release after reincarceration would be less valuable than reparole after reincarceration had been.
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