Florida Department of Corrections
Michael D. Crews, Secretary

A primary offense is the most serious crime for which an inmate was admitted into prison, based on the statutory degree of the crime. It is called the primary offense because many inmates have multiple offenses for which they are being admitted to prison.

• More than a third (33.4%) of the offenses committed by those admitted to prison this fiscal year were violent offenses, including murder, sexual assault, robbery and arson, among others.
  
  
• Property crimes including burglary, theft, forgery and fraud comprised (27.8%) of prison admissions this fiscal year.
  
  
• The sale, manufacture, purchase, trafficking and possession of drugs equaled 28.4% of prison admissions.
  
  
• The "other" category includes racketeering, DUI, traffic and other offenses and comprised 10.4% of admissions.
  
  
• As mentioned previously, the sale, purchase or manufacture of drugs is the single offense for which most inmates were admitted this fiscal year (16.1%), followed by possession of drugs (9.1%) and burglary of a dwelling (7.1%).

Admissions for Violent Vs. Drug Offenses

Blacks and Whites have Equal Sentence Lengths for Second Year For the past two fiscal years, the average sentence lengths of blacks and whites have been equal, while “others” such as Chinese, Native American, Japanese and those of Latin descent received longer sentences in FY 2000-01.