BenchRecon Data · Florida sentencing
Sarasota County: sentencing outcomes by charge
135,021 charge dispositions in Sarasota County, Florida, from public FDLE CJDT Clerk-of-Court data — 36.4% drew a recorded jail or prison sentence. The table below breaks the county's highest-volume charge categories into incarceration rate, median confinement, adjudication-withheld rate, and diversion rate.
“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, since the source confinement field is blank on 56% of charges statewide). Dispositions span 1951-12-22 to 2026-06-20; not time-normalized.
Aggregate analysis, data as of 2026-06-21. Reproducible from public records. No individual is identified; the source data has no judge identifier, so no claim is made about any individual judge.
Sentencing outcomes by charge category
The highest-volume charge categories in Sarasota County. “Median confinement (when incarcerated)” is the typical maximum term among only the charges in that category that resulted in custody — so where the incarceration rate is low, that median describes a small subset of the category's charges, not a typical outcome for the category as a whole. It reads “—” where fewer than 10 charges in that category were incarcerated, or where the category's incarceration rate is too low for the median to be representative.
| Charge category | Charges | Incarceration | Median confinement (when incarcerated) | Adj. withheld | Diversion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driver Licenses | 30,229 | 14.4% | 45 d | 21.1% | 15.6% |
| Drug Abuse Prevention and Control | 28,696 | 51.3% | 183 d | 16.1% | 2.6% |
| State Uniform Traffic Control | 13,138 | 27.1% | 80 d | 22.1% | 3.6% |
| Theft, Robbery, and Related Crimes | 13,015 | 49% | 274 d | 13% | 6.5% |
| Burglary and Trespass | 8,434 | 50.7% | 274 d | 7.9% | 1.7% |
| Assault; Battery; Culpable Negligence | 6,940 | 43.7% | 304 d | 17.6% | 6.9% |
| Obstructing Justice | 5,677 | 31.1% | 61 d | 12.9% | 3.6% |
| Motor Vehicle Licenses | 4,368 | 5.2% | 30 d | 29.6% | 12.2% |
| Abuse of Children | 3,505 | 54.8% | 15.0 yr | 3.2% | 0.3% |
| Fraudulent Practices | 2,328 | 59.5% | 1.3 yr | 14.7% | 2.2% |
| Arson and Criminal Mischief | 1,679 | 30.8% | 183 d | 15.7% | 6.8% |
| Marriage; Domestic Violence | 1,616 | 41.1% | 244 d | 7.5% | 1.2% |
Methodology & limitations
- Source: public Florida FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) Clerk-of-Court case data, grouped by county and FDLE statute-chapter grouping. Snapshot: 2026-06-21. Every figure is reproducible from a published script against the source data.
- “Incarceration” defined: 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 on 56% of charges statewide and counties populate it inconsistently. Cross-county comparison is therefore confounded by reporting completeness.
- Median confinement: median maximum confinement term, in days, among charges that resulted in a jail or prison sentence; reported only where at least 10 such charges exist. Charge categories with fewer than 10 charges overall are omitted.
- No judge dimension: the source data contains no judge identifier. Nothing here describes how any individual judge sentences.
- What the data does NOT show: these figures describe recorded dispositions and do not control for criminal history, offense severity within a chapter, plea posture, or case facts. A category rate is a baseline, not a prediction for any specific case. This page reports aggregates only and identifies no individual.
Comparables for a specific Sarasota County charge
BenchRecon's Sentencing Comparables return the outcome distribution for a specific charge in a specific Florida county, with every figure cited to the underlying public record.