Part II Impact

Section 3. Penalties and Primary Offense Severity

GOAL: The penalty imposed is commensurate with the severity of the primary offense and the circumstances surrounding the primary offense. F.S. 921.001(4)(a)3.

FACT: As the severity of the primary offense increases, the proportion of offenders sentenced to state prison increases, and the length of the prison sentence increases.

NOTE: As a result of scoresheet preparation error or data entry error, there were a minimal number of cases in which the sentencing guidelines level is in error (see page 11 of this report for reasons why errors are not changed). See the Appendix in this report for the Severity Ranking Chart.

FINDINGS:

• The proportion of those sentenced to state prison increased steadily from 3.3% at sentencing guidelines severity level 1, the offense level representing the least severe offenses, to 90.9% at sentencing guidelines severity level 10, the offense level representing the most serious offenses (Table 1).

• Community Control sanctions were imposed progressively more from sentencing guidelines level 1 (8.8%) to sentencing guidelines level 7 (17.7%). Probation sanctions represented a decreasing proportion of cases as sentencing guidelines level moves from level 2 to level 10 (Table 1).

• Over 60% of the offenders with a primary offense at sentencing guidelines severity level 8 received a state prison sentence of four or more years. Over 73% of level 10 offenders received a sentence of more than 10 years in state prison (Table 2).

FACT: The scoresheet total points are a sum of several component scores: the primary offense, additional offenses, prior offenses, victim injury, legal status violations, community sanction violations, firearm and weapons violations, and specific enhancements.

FINDINGS:

• In most cases, the nature of the primary offense made the greatest contribution to total sentencing guidelines points -- as expected given the design of the guidelines. However, offenders scoring to state prison had, on average, a larger percentage of points associated with the nature and number of their additional offenses, as well as other scoring components, compared to those receiving less severe sanctions (Table 3).

• Overall, the primary offense contributed about 65% of total points. This varied from nearly 76% for those with total points are in the non-prison category to 56% for those with total points in the recommended state prison category (see definitions of point categories in the Notes portion of Impact - Section 6 ). In the higher point ranges, prior record, additional offenses, and the other components made great contributions while legal status/community sanction violation points made a great impact at the lower ranges. (Table 3).

• Over half of all scoresheets included points from additional offenses. About 74% had points related to prior record of the offender. Over 21% gained points from community sanction violations, and nearly 9% from victim injury. Of the victim injury points, most came from the slight or moderate categories (Table 4).

• Most offenders have no additional offenses, or only misdemeanors (table 5).