Florida burglary penalties, by degree, straight from the statute.

The burglary penalty ladder, by degree

Under Fla. Stat. § 810.02, burglary is graded into three felony degrees by the facts of the entry. The least serious is an unarmed burglary of an unoccupied structure or conveyance with no assault or battery; the charge escalates when the target is a dwelling or is occupied, and escalates again when the offender is armed, commits an assault or battery, or causes major damage. The degree sets the statutory ceiling; the sentence in a given case sits below it and turns on the facts, the prior record, and the scoresheet.

Offense and degree quoted from Fla. Stat. § 810.02 (Florida Legislature, Online Sunshine); the maximum fine follows from the offense degree under Fla. Stat. § 775.083, and the maximum prison term follows from Fla. Stat. § 775.082 except for the first-degree tier, whose own life ceiling is stated in § 810.02(2). The statutes control; confirm the current text and the specific facts before relying on any figure.

Third-degree burglary: the unarmed, unoccupied baseline

Under § 810.02(4), a burglary in which the offender is unarmed and commits no assault or battery, and enters or remains in a structure with no person present, or a conveyance with no person present is felony of the third degree (up to 5 years of imprisonment, a fine of up to $5,000). That is the baseline burglary grade; the escalations below are driven by the target being a dwelling or occupied, the offender being armed, or an assault or battery.

Second-degree burglary: a dwelling, or an occupied structure or conveyance

Under § 810.02(3), where the offender is unarmed and commits no assault or battery, a burglary of a dwelling (whether or not a person is present), an occupied structure or conveyance, an authorized emergency vehicle, or a structure or conveyance entered to steal a controlled substance is felony of the second degree (up to 15 years of prison, a fine of up to $10,000). Whether the target was a dwelling, and whether anyone was present, are the pivots that separate this degree from the third-degree baseline, so the entry has to be read against the statute rather than assumed.

First-degree burglary: an assault or battery, armed, or the vehicle or over-threshold damage prong

The most serious tier turns on what happened during the offense, not just what was entered. Under § 810.02(2), when the offender makes an assault or battery on any person, is or becomes armed within the dwelling, structure, or conveyance with a dangerous weapon or explosives, or (entering an occupied or unoccupied dwelling or structure) either uses a motor vehicle as an instrumentality other than a getaway vehicle and thereby damages the dwelling or structure, or causes damage in excess of $1,000, the burglary is felony of the first degree. The statute sets its own maximum for this tier: imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life imprisonment, which is higher than the ordinary first-degree-felony ceiling, with a fine of up to $10,000. Because this tier can reach a life maximum, which aggravating fact applies has to be confirmed against the statute rather than assumed from the arrest narrative.

Reclassification during a riot or a declared emergency

Beyond the ladder above, Fla. Stat. § 810.02 raises a burglary one degree when it is committed during a riot or an aggravated riot, or within a county under a Governor-declared state of emergency, where the offense is facilitated by conditions arising from the riot or emergency. That reclassification is analyzed under its own terms and is outside the scope of this general reference. The point for practice is that the base degree above is the starting point, not the ceiling, once such a reclassification is in play.

Trespass and burglary tools are separate offenses

Burglary under Fla. Stat. § 810.02 requires entering or remaining in a dwelling, structure, or conveyance with the intent to commit an offense inside. A trespass under Fla. Stat. § 810.08 and possession of burglary tools under Fla. Stat. § 810.06 are separate Fla. Stat. ch. 810 offenses. This guide covers burglary only; those statutes are analyzed on their own terms and their penalties are not computed here.

The scoresheet sets the floor within the maximum

For any burglary, the statutory maximum is the ceiling, not the sentence. Florida's Criminal Punishment Code scoresheet sets the lowest permissible sentence from the offense severity level, the prior record, and any enhancements, and the court sentences within the range that runs from that floor up to the statutory maximum. For how the scoresheet is built, see the free Florida scoresheet calculator. A burglary charge's exposure is the combination of the statutory maximum above and the scoresheet floor.

What the aggregate sentencing data shows

Read the figure below as descriptive, not predictive. It is a statewide rate across all charge types, not burglary alone, and is a floor over recorded sentences. These figures are not adjusted for offense severity, criminal history, plea posture, or case facts, they do not measure any prosecutor, court, or judge, and they are not a prediction of what any burglary case will draw. Counties differ in case mix, so the figure reflects what and who is in the data.

The statute sets the exposure; the public records show how sentences actually landed. In the FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency Clerk-of-Court data, across 3,937,598 analyzed charge dispositions, 44% drew a recorded jail or prison sentence. That is a floor, not a true rate, because the confinement field is blank on many charges and is treated as non-incarceration. It spans every charge type, so it orients rather than predicts; the companion data study breaks the recorded incarceration rate and confinement length down by charge category and county.

The arrest and the account start with the officer

Whatever the statutory exposure, a burglary case usually turns on the officer's account of the entry, the stop, and the arrest. Before the penalty conversation, the leverage is often in how the case was built. BenchRecon's Officer Lookup searches the arresting officer's Florida FDLE/CJSTC certification-discipline and incident-ledger record, every row cited to the underlying public record, so the impeachment and credibility angles surface before you draft the motion.

Reference

For the Chapter 810 burglary and trespass statutes, source-linked to the official text, see the Florida burglary statute reference. For how sentences actually landed across the state, see the Florida sentencing-outcomes data study. For the full set of Florida charge references, start at the Florida criminal-defense references hub.