Sentencing Guidelines 1995-96 Annual Report, Part III: Sentencing Guidelines Practice

Section 1. Recommended Sanction and Sanction Imposed

NOTES: This section examines three categories of sentences:

• Category 1 - Those in which total points on the scoresheet are less than 34.8. The sentencing guidelines mandate a non-state prison sanction for offenders in this range, unless the sentence is aggravated.
• Category 2 - Those in which total points are between 34.8 and 52.0. Within this range, the guidelines provide judges with discretion in sentencing to state prison or non-state prison sanctions.
• Category 3 - Those in which total points exceed 52.0, for which the guidelines mandate state prison as the sanction, unless the sentence is mitigated.

Actual sanctions imposed, including state prison, community control, probation, county jail/time served, and other sanctions are presented and compared to the categories listed above.

FINDINGS:

• Across the state, over 17% of offenders were sentenced to state prison as the most severe sanction. An additional 22% were sentenced to incarceration in county jail, or to time already served in jail. More than 11% were sentenced to community control, and nearly 50% to probation, including drug offender probation, administrative probation, and regular probation. Less than a third of a percent of offenders were sentenced to "other" sanctions. Circuits varied moderately in the types of sanction imposed (Figure 1, Table 1).
• Total scoresheet points averaged 38.9, with 19.1% of the offenders in the recommended state prison category, 26% in the discretionary category, and 55% in the non-state prison category (Table 2).
• Of offenders scoring in the recommended state prison category, nearly 59% were sentenced to state prison, with another 7% sentenced to county jail or time served. Of those in the discretionary range, over 19% were sentenced to state prison, and another 24% to county jail/time served. Less than 2% of offenders in the non-state prison range were sentenced to state prison (Table 3).
• Those sentenced to state prison averaged 75.2 total points on the scoresheet, compared with 43.9 for community control, 28.4 for probation, and 31.4 for county jail/time served. This means that the average offender sentenced to state prison had a score that falls in category 3, while the average community control offender had a score that falls in category 2, and all others were in the recommended non-prison ranges (Table 4).
• Of those with sentence points exceeding 52.0, about half fell into the violent offenses of murder/manslaughter, sexual/lewd assault, robbery, and other violent (Figure 4).
• Offenders in the recommended state prison sanction category are most likely to be sentenced to prison if they were convicted of attempted 1st degree murder, attempted or completed 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder, attempted capital sexual battery, life sexual battery, robbery with or without a weapon, or drug trafficking (Table 5).
• Males scored more often than females in the recommended state prison sanction range, and were sentenced more often to prison (Tables 7, 8).
• Minority offenders scored more often than white offenders in the recommended state prison sanction range, and were sentenced more often to state prison or to county jail, and less often to probation (Tables 9, 10).
• The youngest offenders (age 17 and below) scored more often than older offenders in the recommended state prison sanction category and were sentenced more often to state prison. Among other age groups, there was little variation in sentence points or sanction by age (Tables 11, 12).