BenchRecon Data Study · Florida
The Florida drug-sentencing going rate by substance, 249,618 charges analyzed.
We grouped 249,618 Florida drug-charge dispositions from the state's public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) Clerk-of-Court data by the recorded drug type, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and 13 more, and report the observed incarceration rate and the typical confinement term for each. Use it as a descriptive “going rate,” the outcome the state records for each substance, when you sit down to negotiate.
Read these as descriptive, not causal, and not predictive. These rates are not adjusted for charge degree or level, trafficking-weight thresholds, criminal history, plea posture, or jurisdiction, and they do not predict any specific case. A substance showing a higher rate does not mean the drug itself drives a harsher sentence: which substances get charged at trafficking weight, at what felony degree, and against whom differ systematically before sentencing (confounds). The figures describe what the state recorded, not what any drug causes.
“Incarceration” means a sentence to county jail or state prison; the rate is the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence (a lower bound). For context, the statewide incarceration rate across all charge types is 42%. Dispositions span 1980-03-03 to 2026-06-19 (96% 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.
Key finding — cite this
As of 2026-06-21, BenchRecon compiled the recorded incarceration rate and confinement-term distribution for 249,618 Florida drug-charge dispositions across 17 recorded substance categories from the public FDLE CJDT statewide Clerk-of-Court data. These are descriptive, uncontrolled rates: they are not adjusted for charge degree or level, trafficking-weight thresholds, criminal history, or jurisdiction, and a substance's higher recorded rate reflects the mix of charges and defendants in that group (confounds), not a property of the drug. Source: Florida FDLE CJDT Clerk-of-Court data; BenchRecon analysis.
Descriptive, uncontrolled aggregate reproducible from public FDLE CJDT data; confounds dominate; no causal or predictive claim; no individual is identified.
Look up the going rate for a substance
Pick a substance to see its recorded incarceration rate and the spread of confinement terms among the charges that drew a jail or prison sentence. Read the bar as the middle 50% of terms (25th to 75th percentile) with the median marked, a descriptive picture of the state's recorded outcomes, not a forecast for any case.
Descriptive, not causal or predictive. These figures are unadjusted for charge degree or level, trafficking weight, criminal history, and jurisdiction; they describe what the state recorded for this drug type, not what the drug causes, and cannot forecast any case.
Every substance, side by side
The full breakdown, ordered by charge volume. The differences across substances are large, but, as the caveat above explains, they reflect differences in what is charged and against whom at least as much as anything about the drug. The same caution applies to every figure on this page.
| Substance (recorded drug type) | Charges | Incarceration rate | Median term (when incarcerated) | Middle 50% (25th–75th pct) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cocaine (All forms except Crack) | 64,940 | 75% | 213 days | 39–731 days |
| Marijuana | 45,713 | 45.7% | 61 days | 11–213 days |
| Crack Cocaine | 44,721 | 61.5% | 274 days | 70–913 days |
| Unknown Drug Type | 29,918 | 61% | 122 days | 36–366 days |
| Other Drugs | 22,266 | 66.5% | 120 days | 30–364 days |
| Amphetamines/Methamphetamines | 13,297 | 73.8% | 366 days | 180–1,096 days |
| Other Stimulants | 10,416 | 83.5% | 120 days | 51–366 days |
| Other Narcotics | 7,030 | 81.2% | 274 days | 79–1,096 days |
| Opium | 3,295 | 71.8% | 457 days | 200–1,309 days |
| Other Hallucinogens | 2,694 | 49.9% | 411 days | 150–1,096 days |
| Heroin | 2,566 | 81.5% | 365 days | 120–1,096 days |
| Other Depressants | 1,555 | 70.1% | 180 days | 64–548 days |
| Barbiturates | 712 | 70.2% | 396 days | 235–1,096 days |
| Hashish | 276 | 82.2% | 365 days | 213–1,096 days |
| Morphine | 121 | 76% | 562 days | 90–1,461 days |
| LSD | 83 | 81.9% | 1,096 days | 364–2,146 days |
| PCP | 15 | 66.7% | 396 days | 396–3,105 days |
Methodology & limitations
Source & method
- Source: public Florida FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) Clerk-of-Court case data. Snapshot analyzed: 2026-06-21.
- Population: 249,618 charge dispositions whose recorded drug type is non-blank, grouped into 17 substance categories. The grain is one charge, not one case.
- Substance: the FDLE recorded drug-type field, kept verbatim, including grouped buckets (for example “Cocaine (All forms except Crack)” and “Unknown Drug Type”). These are recording categories, not pharmacological classifications.
- “Incarceration” defined: a charge is counted as incarceration only when its sentence is a sentence to county jail or state prison. The rate is the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence, a lower bound, because the source confinement field is blank when no custodial sentence is recorded.
- Confinement term: the median, mean, and 25th/75th-percentile maximum confinement term, in days, among the charges in a substance that resulted in a jail or prison sentence with a positive term. Reported only where at least 10 such charges exist.
- Small cells suppressed: any substance category with fewer than 10 charges is excluded from every figure.
- 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.
What the data does NOT show
- Not causal. Not predictive. These rates are not adjusted for charge degree or level, trafficking-weight thresholds, criminal history, plea posture, or jurisdiction. A substance's higher recorded rate does not mean the drug itself drives a harsher sentence, and the figures cannot forecast any specific case.
- Confounds dominate. Charge degree and level (a third-degree felony versus a trafficking count), the statutory weight thresholds that turn possession into trafficking, criminal history, and county practice all vary by substance and all independently move sentences. The observed differences reflect that mix, not a property of the drug.
- A floor, not a true rate. The confinement field is populated only when a custodial sentence is recorded, so the incarceration rate is the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence, a lower bound.
- Not time-normalized. The figures pool every disposition in the extract regardless of year (1980-03-03 to 2026-06-19), a period over which Florida drug law and charging practice changed substantially.
- Recording categories are coarse. A single drug-type label mixes possession, sale, and trafficking counts of very different severity, so even a within-substance figure does not hold charge degree constant.
- No individual defendant, charge, or case is identified. This study reports aggregates only.
Cite this analysis
Journalists and researchers, please link to this page as the source, and please preserve the descriptive, not-causal framing when you cite the figures.
BenchRecon, “Florida drug-sentencing going rate by substance” (descriptive, uncontrolled aggregates; FDLE CJDT Clerk-of-Court data, 2026-06-21). https://benchrecon.com/florida/drug-sentencing
Download the full aggregate as a CSV file to reproduce or re-analyze any figure. See also the Florida sentencing outcomes by county and charge study and 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, the tailored companion to this statewide going-rate view.
Common questions
- What is this data and where does it come from?
- It is a descriptive, uncontrolled aggregate analysis of 249,618 Florida drug-charge dispositions from the public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) statewide Clerk-of-Court case data, grouped by the drug type recorded for the charge. It is reproducible from the public source data and identifies no individual.
- Does a higher rate for a substance mean the drug itself makes a sentence harsher?
- No. These are descriptive, uncontrolled rates, not causal. They are not adjusted for charge degree or level, trafficking-weight thresholds, criminal history, plea posture, or jurisdiction. Which substances tend to be charged at trafficking weight, at what felony degree, and against whom differ systematically before any sentencing decision. A substance's higher recorded rate reflects the mix of charges and defendants in that group (confounds), not a property of the drug itself. Nothing here says one substance is treated more harshly than another for a comparable charge.
- Can I use these figures to forecast my client's sentence?
- No. These are unadjusted statewide aggregates and cannot forecast any specific case, which turns on its charge degree, weight, facts, criminal history, and county. Treat the figures as descriptive negotiation context, the observed going rate across the state, not as a forecast. 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.
- 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. The rate is the share of charges with a recorded jail or prison sentence, a lower bound, because the source confinement field is blank when no custodial sentence is recorded. That under-recording applies across every substance, so it does not by itself drive the direction of the differences, but every rate should be read as descriptive only.
- What does the confinement term measure?
- The median (and mean and interquartile range) of the maximum confinement term, in days, among the charges for a substance that resulted in a jail or prison sentence with a positive term. It is reported only where at least 10 such charges exist. A single median can mislead, so the 25th- and 75th-percentile terms are shown alongside it to convey the spread.
- Why are some substance categories grouped or labeled the way they are?
- The substance labels are the FDLE drug-type categories exactly as recorded, including grouped buckets such as "Cocaine (All forms except Crack)", "Other Narcotics", and "Unknown Drug Type". A category with fewer than 10 charges is suppressed. These are recording categories, not pharmacological classifications, and no individual is identified.