Sentencing Guidelines 1995-96 Annual Report, Part II: Impact

Section 4. Sentence and Prior Record

GOAL: The severity of the sentence increases with the length and nature of the offender's prior record. F.S. 921.001(4)(a)4.

FACT: As the number of prior felony convictions increases, the percentage of offenders sentenced to state prison increases.

FINDINGS:

• Over 52% of offenders had no prior offense records or misdemeanors only (Table 1).
• Only 8.1% of the offenders with no prior felonies were sentenced to state prison. More than 60% of offenders with six or more prior felony convictions were sentenced to state prison, regardless of the severity of the current offense (Table 2).
• Almost 65% of all offenders with no prior felony convictions were sentenced to probation (Table 2).

FACT: The average length of a state prison sentence increases as the number of prior felony convictions of offenders increases.

FINDINGS:

• For offenders convicted of offenses with sentencing guidelines severity levels between 1 and 4, the average increase in state prison sentence length for each prior felony was 1.8 months. For levels 5 to 7, the increase for each prior felony resulted in an average increase of 5.7 months. And for levels 8 to 10, each prior felony added an average of 15.6 months to the state prison sentence (Table 3).

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