What Information Is Included in a PSI Report?

A federal presentence investigation report, often called a PSI or PSR, is the document a U.S. probation officer prepares between your conviction and your sentencing hearing to give the judge a full picture of you, the offense, and the sentence that fits. Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requires it before the court imposes sentence. The contents follow a consistent structure: your personal and social history, your criminal record, the facts of the current offense, victim impact information, your financial condition, the sentencing guidelines calculations, and the probation officer’s own assessment and, often, a recommendation.¹

Personal and Social History

The report opens with your life outside the courtroom. The probation officer interviews you, your family members, and sometimes employers or counselors. Rule 32 requires information about your “history and characteristics” and “any circumstances affecting the defendant’s behavior that may be helpful in imposing sentence or in correctional treatment.”¹

The personal and family section documents your age, birthplace, marital status, dependents, and relationships with parents and siblings. The officer also records your educational background, including schools attended and degrees or certifications earned, your full employment history, and any military service.²

Physical health, mental health, and substance use each get their own subsections. Significant medical conditions, mental health diagnoses, and any history of drug or alcohol use are documented. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, mental and emotional conditions can support a departure from the standard range when they are “present to an unusual degree” and distinguish your case from typical ones.³ If the court wants a deeper evaluation than what the probation officer gathers, it can order a full psychiatric or psychological examination under 18 U.S.C. § 3552(c).⁴

Criminal Record

The probation officer pulls your complete criminal history from official records and lays it out chronologically. For each prior offense, the report lists the date, the charges, the outcome, and the sentence imposed. The officer notes any history of probation, parole, supervised release, or incarceration, along with whether you complied with those conditions or violated them.⁵

This section is not just a list. Each prior sentence is scored under a point formula that places you into one of six criminal history categories, which combines with your offense level to produce your sentencing range.⁶ A single misstated conviction here can shift your range by months.

The Current Offense

The report gives a narrative of the crime itself: date, time, location, and the sequence of events. The probation officer reconstructs the facts through interviews with law enforcement officers, victims, and witnesses, and a review of documents and evidence.⁵ It describes your role and the conduct of any co-defendants, including planning and the circumstances leading to your arrest.²

The officer identifies aggravating factors that could push the sentence higher and mitigating factors that could lower it. Aggravators might include use of a weapon or targeting a vulnerable victim. Mitigators could include a minor role or cooperation with investigators. These details feed into specific offense characteristics under the guidelines, adjusting the base offense level up or down.

Sentencing Guidelines Calculations

This is the most technically dense part of the report, and for many defendants the most consequential. The presentence report must identify all applicable guidelines and policy statements, calculate your offense level and criminal history category, state the resulting sentencing range, and identify any basis for departing from that range.¹

The offense level starts with a base number set by the guidelines for your specific crime, then gets adjusted up or down based on specific offense characteristics. Enhancements may apply, for example, if you qualify as a career offender. A two-level reduction is available for “zero-point offenders” who meet the qualifying criteria.⁶ The final offense level and criminal history category intersect on the sentencing table to produce an advisory range in months. The guidelines are advisory, but judges must consult them and explain any deviation, so the officer’s calculations become the starting point for every argument from both sides.

Victim Impact Information

Victim impact is a required component of the report. The probation officer interviews victims and documents the financial, social, psychological, and medical harm the offense caused.² Victims also submit written statements to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which forwards them to the probation office for inclusion.⁷

These statements describe emotional toll, physical injuries, and financial losses: medical bills, therapy costs, lost wages, property damage. The report covers all victims of the offense, not only those whose losses affect the guidelines calculation.² The same information lays the groundwork for any restitution the court may order.

Financial Condition and Restitution

Rule 32 requires the report to address your financial condition.¹ The officer documents your income sources, assets like property or savings, and liabilities like debts and existing obligations such as child support. This helps the judge decide whether monetary penalties are realistic and how to structure any payment schedule.

When restitution is on the table, the financial analysis gets more detailed. Under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act, courts must order restitution for certain categories of crime, and the report must contain enough information for the court to calculate it. The loss categories include:

Property losses: the greater of the property’s value on the date of the crime or the date of sentencing, minus the value of anything returned.
Bodily injury: medical and therapy costs, rehabilitation expenses, and income the victim lost because of the offense.
Death: funeral and related costs.
Participation costs: lost income, childcare, transportation, and other expenses victims incurred to participate in the investigation, prosecution, or court proceedings.

The probation officer investigates and documents each of these so the court has the numbers it needs for a restitution order.⁸

The Probation Officer’s Assessment and Recommendation

After compiling the facts, the probation officer offers an assessment. The officer evaluates your risk of reoffending and identifies needs like substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling, educational programs, or job training. Where appropriate, the report describes nonprison programs and community resources available to you, which matters when the court is weighing alternatives to incarceration.¹

The probation officer may also include a sentencing recommendation. Courts can direct, by local rule or case-specific order, that this recommendation be disclosed only to the judge and not shared with the parties.¹ Whether or not you see the recommendation itself, the officer’s analysis of your risk and needs shapes the judge’s thinking about conditions and the length of any supervision.

What Your Copy Leaves Out

Certain information is excluded from the version of the report you receive. The report must leave out any diagnoses that could seriously disrupt a rehabilitation program, sources obtained under a promise of confidentiality, and other information whose disclosure might result in harm to you or others. If the judge relies on any of that excluded information at sentencing, the court must give both sides a written summary and a reasonable opportunity to respond.¹ The report itself is not a public document; the officer cannot submit it to the court or share its contents until you have pleaded guilty, entered a no-contest plea, or been found guilty.

Reviewing the Report and Objecting to Errors

This is the part most defendants underestimate. You and your attorney receive the presentence report at least 35 days before sentencing. You then have 14 days to submit written objections to anything in the report, including factual errors, disputed guideline calculations, and policy statements that were included or left out.⁹

After objections come in, the probation officer can meet with both sides, investigate further, and revise the report, then submit a final version with an addendum listing any disputes that remain. At the sentencing hearing, the judge must verify that you and your attorney have read and discussed the report, and must rule on any disputed matters before imposing sentence.⁹

Read every line with your attorney. A criminal history point that shouldn’t be there, an inaccurate description of your role, or a miscalculated guidelines range can shift your sentence by months or years. Objections you don’t raise in writing before sentencing are much harder to pursue on appeal.

How the Report Follows You After Sentencing

The report keeps working after the judge announces your sentence. The Bureau of Prisons uses information from it when determining your security designation, facility assignment, and program eligibility; the BOP’s classification system draws on the PSI to score the factors that decide where you serve your sentence and what programming you can access.¹⁰

The report also follows you into supervision. If you’re placed on probation or supervised release after incarceration, the officer supervising you will reference the same report to understand your risk factors, treatment needs, and the conditions the court imposed. Inaccuracies that were not corrected before sentencing can continue to affect your classification and programming decisions for years. That is one more reason to treat the review window as the most important stretch of time between conviction and sentencing.

1
Legal Information Institute. Rule 32 – Sentencing and Judgment
2
United States District Court Northern District of Georgia. Explanation of the Presentence Investigation Report
3
United States Sentencing Commission. 2024 Guidelines Manual Chapter 5 – Determining the Sentence
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3552 – Presentence Reports
5
United States Courts. About Federal Courts – Presentence Investigations
6
United States Sentencing Commission. Annotated 2025 Chapter 4
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Victim Impact Statements
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3663A – Mandatory Restitution to Victims of Certain Crimes
9
Justia Law. Fed R Crim P 32 – Sentencing and Judgment
10
Federal Bureau of Prisons. Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification – Program Statement 5100.08