What is this Florida sentencing data and where does it come from?

It is an aggregate analysis of 3,937,598 charge dispositions from Florida's public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) statewide Clerk-of-Court case data. Each figure is grouped by county, charge category, and judicial circuit. It is reproducible from the public source data and identifies no individual.

How is 'incarceration' defined, and is the rate exact?

A charge counts as incarceration only when its sentence is a sentence to county jail or state prison; diversionary, hospital, and juvenile-facility confinements are reported separately and not counted as incarceration. The rate should be read as the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence, a lower bound, because the source confinement field is blank on about 56% of charges and counties populate it inconsistently. For that reason, cross-county comparison of incarceration rates is confounded by reporting completeness, and counties with very sparse confinement reporting are flagged.

What does 'median confinement' mean here?

It is the median maximum confinement term, in days, among the charges in a cell that resulted in a jail or prison sentence. Charges with no recorded custodial sentence are excluded from the median, so it reflects the typical length when incarceration was imposed, not an average across all charges.

Why are some counties or charge categories missing?

Any county x charge-category x circuit cell with fewer than 10 charges is suppressed. Small cells produce unreliable rates and raise privacy concerns, so they are excluded from every figure and from the reconciliation totals.

Does this data show how individual judges sentence?

No. The CJDT Clerk-of-Court data does not include a judge identifier, so this analysis makes no claim about any individual judge. It reports outcomes at the county, charge-category, and judicial-circuit level only.

Can I use these figures for a specific case?

These are statewide aggregates and a starting point for understanding typical outcomes by county and charge. For comparables tailored to a specific charge and county, see the Sentencing Comparables tool, which works from the same public data and cites every figure.

BenchRecon Data Study · Florida

Florida sentencing outcomes, by county and charge, 3,937,598 charges analyzed.

We aggregated 3,937,598 Florida charge dispositions from the state's public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) Clerk-of-Court data into 3,182 county-by-charge-by-circuit cells across 66 counties and 20 judicial circuits, showing how recorded sentencing outcomes vary by county and charge.

For each county and charge category the figures below report the median confinement term, the share of charges that ended in incarceration, the share resolved by adjudication withheld, and the share resolved by pre-trial diversion. Cells with fewer than 10 charges are suppressed.

“Incarceration” here means a sentence to county jail or state prison , diversionary, hospital, and juvenile-facility confinements are not counted as incarceration. Dispositions span 1951-12-22 to 2026-06-20 (96.9% are from 2000 or later; median disposition year 2022); the figures are not time-normalized.

Aggregate analysis. Reproducible from public records. No individual defendant, charge, or case is identified, and the source data contains no judge identifier, so no claim is made about any individual judge.

3,937,598charge dispositions analyzed (statewide)

66Florida counties with reportable data

44%of the 3,937,598 analyzed (post-suppression) charges drew a recorded jail or prison sentence

3,182county × charge × circuit cells (≥10 charges each)

What the data shows

Florida publishes statewide charge-disposition data through the FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency program. Aggregated, it makes visible something every practitioner suspects but rarely sees measured: outcomes for the same charge category vary by county. The same statute chapter draws a different median confinement term, a different incarceration rate, and a different adjudication-withheld rate depending on where the case is filed.

The per-county tables below report those four measures for each county's highest-volume charge categories. Outcomes for the same charge category vary materially by county, a fact often invisible without the aggregate.

Methodology & limitations

Source & method

Source: public Florida FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) Clerk-of-Court case data. Snapshot analyzed: 2026-06-21.
Population: 3,937,598 charge dispositions across 66 counties and 20 judicial circuits, grouped into 3,182 county × charge-category × circuit cells. The grain is one charge, not one case.
Charge category: the FDLE statute-chapter grouping (the Florida Statutes chapter family the charge falls under, e.g. “Drug Abuse Prevention and Control” or “Theft, Robbery, and Related Crimes”).
“Incarceration” defined: a charge is counted as incarceration only when its sentence is a sentence to county jail or state prison. Diversionary, hospital, and juvenile-facility confinements (together about 0.03% of custodial dispositions) are not counted as incarceration; they appear only in the separate “any custodial disposition” figure.
Denominator: every percentage is over the charges in the cell after small-cell suppression, i.e. the share of analyzed charges, county-weighted at the statewide level. The grain is one charge, not one defendant or case.
Disposition period: dispositions span 1951-12-22 to 2026-06-20; 96.9% are from 2000 or later and the median disposition year is 2022. The figures pool every disposition in the extract and are not normalized to a sentencing era.
Median confinement: the median maximum confinement term, in days, among charges that resulted in a jail or prison sentence with a positive term. Reported only where at least 10 such charges exist in the cell.
Small cells suppressed: any cell with fewer than 10 charges is excluded from every figure and from the reconciliation totals, for statistical reliability and privacy.
Reproducible: every figure is regenerated by a verification script run against the public FDLE CJDT source data, and the aggregate is published as a downloadable CSV. The verification script reconciles every published number to the source row-for-row; re-running it reproduces this page.

What the data does NOT show

No judge dimension. The CJDT Clerk-of-Court data contains no judge identifier. Nothing here describes how any individual judge sentences.
These figures describe recorded dispositions; they do not control for criminal history, offense severity within a chapter, plea posture, or the facts of any case.
A floor, not a true rate, confinement reporting is uneven. In the source data the confinement field is populated only when a custodial sentence is recorded; it is blank on 56% of analyzed charges. Because counties populate it inconsistently, the incarceration rate is best read as the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence, a lower bound, and cross-county comparison is confounded by reporting completeness. Counties whose confinement field is recorded on fewer than 5% of charges are flagged on their county page; their rate is a reporting artifact, not a real outcome.
Not time-normalized. The 2026-06-21 date is when the source extract was analyzed, not the date range of the underlying dispositions, which the published extract does not state. The figures pool every disposition in the extract regardless of year, so outcomes are not normalized to a sentencing era.
A county's rate for a charge category is a baseline, not a prediction for any specific case.
No individual defendant, charge, or case is identified. This study reports aggregates only.

By county

Per-county breakdowns, charge volume and the incarceration rate for 66 Florida counties with reportable data:

Cite this analysis

Journalists and researchers, please link to this page as the source.

BenchRecon, “Florida sentencing outcomes by county and charge: 3.9 million charges analyzed” (FDLE CJDT Clerk-of-Court data, 2026-06-21). https://benchrecon.com/florida/sentencing-data

Download the full aggregate as a CSV file (one row per county and charge category) to reproduce or re-analyze any figure. Methodology questions or a data request for a story: see the Florida criminal statutes reference.

Get the comparables for your charge and county

BenchRecon's Sentencing Comparables work from this same public data, returning the outcome distribution for a specific charge in a specific Florida county, with every figure cited to the underlying record.

See Florida sentencing comparables Free: Florida criminal statutes reference Free: Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure Florida officer discipline data study Companion: scoresheet study — guideline floor & downward-departure rate Companion: case outcomes by type of representation Search the arresting officer's disciplinary record →

Common questions

What is this Florida sentencing data and where does it come from?: It is an aggregate analysis of 3,937,598 charge dispositions from Florida's public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) statewide Clerk-of-Court case data. Each figure is grouped by county, charge category, and judicial circuit. It is reproducible from the public source data and identifies no individual.
How is 'incarceration' defined, and is the rate exact?: A charge counts as incarceration only when its sentence is a sentence to county jail or state prison; diversionary, hospital, and juvenile-facility confinements are reported separately and not counted as incarceration. The rate should be read as the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence, a lower bound, because the source confinement field is blank on about 56% of charges and counties populate it inconsistently. For that reason, cross-county comparison of incarceration rates is confounded by reporting completeness, and counties with very sparse confinement reporting are flagged.
What does 'median confinement' mean here?: It is the median maximum confinement term, in days, among the charges in a cell that resulted in a jail or prison sentence. Charges with no recorded custodial sentence are excluded from the median, so it reflects the typical length when incarceration was imposed, not an average across all charges.
Why are some counties or charge categories missing?: Any county x charge-category x circuit cell with fewer than 10 charges is suppressed. Small cells produce unreliable rates and raise privacy concerns, so they are excluded from every figure and from the reconciliation totals.
Does this data show how individual judges sentence?: No. The CJDT Clerk-of-Court data does not include a judge identifier, so this analysis makes no claim about any individual judge. It reports outcomes at the county, charge-category, and judicial-circuit level only.
Can I use these figures for a specific case?: These are statewide aggregates and a starting point for understanding typical outcomes by county and charge. For comparables tailored to a specific charge and county, see the Sentencing Comparables tool, which works from the same public data and cites every figure.