Guide · Florida case outcomes
How often Florida charges are dismissed, and what the data actually says.
“How often do charges get dropped?” is one of the first questions a client asks and one of the hardest to answer honestly. The public Florida records give a statewide baseline for how charges are resolved, but the number is easy to misread as a prediction. This is a working reference to what the four disposition families mean, why a dismissal rate is not a prosecutor's declination rate, and how to read the statewide figures without turning a descriptive share into a promise about a real case.
Free · search by charge and circuit
See the recorded dismissal, diversion, and conviction shares for a specific charge category in a specific Florida circuit, drawn from 4,273,369 charge dispositions of public FDLE data, with a downloadable CSV. No account, no upload.
Open the Florida charge-disposition data study →Read the rates below as descriptive, not causal, and not predictive. The disposition shares are recorded rates across many different charges, circuits, and years. They are not adjusted for charge severity, evidence strength, criminal history, or case facts, they do not measure any prosecutor, office, or court, and they are not a drop rate any specific case should expect. Circuits and charge categories differ in case mix, so a higher or lower share reflects what and who is in each group. This is not a ranking of circuits by leniency, and nothing here is legal advice about any reader's case.
The statewide baseline
In the public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency Clerk-of-Court data, across 4,273,369 charge dispositions, 4.7% were resolved by a court-recorded dismissal and 7.4% by pre-trial diversion. Most charges were proven: 84.4% ended in a conviction, meaning adjudicated guilty or adjudication withheld, and only 0.5% in an acquittal, with the remaining 3% resolved by another or procedural disposition. That is the mixed-population baseline. Every narrower cut, by charge category or by circuit, should be read against it rather than in isolation.
| Disposition family | Statewide share | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Dismissed | 4.7% | Court-recorded dismissals, including speedy-trial and restitution dismissals and decline-to-adjudicate. |
| Diversion | 7.4% | Charges resolved through pre-trial diversion rather than a disposition on the merits. |
| Acquitted | 0.5% | Acquittals, including acquittal by reason of insanity. |
| Convicted | 84.4% | Adjudicated guilty or adjudication withheld; both are outcomes on a proven charge. |
Figures reproduced from the Florida charge-disposition data study, derived from public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) Clerk-of-Court data (snapshot 2026-06-21; 4,273,369 charge dispositions).
What each disposition family means
The four families are mutually exclusive and are built from the verbatim Disposition values recorded in the source, not inferred from anything else. Dismissed collects court-recorded dismissals, including speedy-trial and restitution dismissals and decline-to-adjudicate. Diversion is pre-trial diversion, a resolution that avoids a disposition on the merits. Acquitted includes acquittal and acquittal by reason of insanity. Convicted combines adjudicated guilty and adjudication withheld, because both are outcomes entered on a proven charge even though only one enters a formal judgment. A small other or procedural remainder makes each grouping sum to 100 percent.
A dismissal rate is not a declination rate
The single most common misreading is to treat this as a measure of how often prosecutors decline to charge. It is not. These are court dispositions of filed charges, the recorded resolution of each charge, not the state attorney's charging decision. The source Disposition field contains no nolle prosequi or no information value, so the study reports only the dismissal, diversion, and acquittal families it can verify from the record. A charge a prosecutor never filed, or dropped before any disposition was entered, is simply not in the dismissal share. Read the figures as how filed charges were resolved by the court, never as a declination rate.
Why the rate shifts by charge category
Dismissal and diversion shares vary widely by the kind of charge, which is exactly why the statewide number can mislead. The categories below show that spread. They are the same descriptive, uncontrolled figures, cut by charge category rather than pooled: the different shares reflect the different mix of offenses, severities, and case postures inside each category, not a judgment about how any charge will resolve.
| Charge category | Dismissed | Diversion | Convicted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drug Abuse Prevention and Control | 1.4% | 4.3% | 93.4% |
| Theft, Robbery, and Related Crimes | 1.6% | 7.8% | 89.5% |
| Assault; Battery; Culpable Negligence | 2.7% | 11.3% | 82.3% |
Per-category shares reproduced from the Florida charge-disposition data study. The study breaks each of the 10 charge categories down further by judicial circuit.
How to read the data for a real case
The value of the aggregate is orientation, not prediction. These steps keep the figures honest when you put them next to an actual charge.
- Start from the statewide baseline, not a headline number. Across 4,273,369 charge dispositions the statewide split is 4.7% dismissed, 7.4% diverted, 0.5% acquitted, and 84.4% convicted. Read that as the mixed-population baseline before looking at any narrower cut.
- Match the charge category, not just the offense name. Find the charge category that contains the offense, because dismissal and diversion shares vary widely by category. The category groups many distinct offenses of differing severity, so it orients you without describing any single charge.
- Read the rate as descriptive, never as a probability. A category's recorded dismissal or diversion share is what happened across past charges in that group. It is not the chance that a specific charge will be dismissed, because the group is not adjusted for severity, evidence, history, or facts.
- Separate a dismissal from a declination. These are court dispositions of filed charges, not prosecutors' charging decisions. The source has no nolle prosequi or no information value, so do not read the dismissal share as how often charges are declined before filing.
- Confirm the figure against the live study before you cite it. Pull the exact charge-category and circuit figure from the companion data study, which is reproducible from the public FDLE source and suppresses any cell with fewer than 10 charges, before relying on it in a memo or conversation.
What the aggregate does and does not tell you
The rates pool dispositions from 1951-12-22 to 2026-06-20 (96.9 percent from 2000 or later; median disposition year 2022) and are not time-normalized, so charging and diversion practice changed over the span. The aggregate tells you how common each disposition is across a large, mixed population and roughly how much that varies by charge category and circuit. It does not, and cannot, predict whether a specific charge will be dismissed, which depends on the offense, the evidence, the client's history, and the facts. Any cell with fewer than 10 charges is suppressed for reliability.
The data study breaks the dismissal, diversion, and conviction shares down by charge category and judicial circuit, so you can pull the recorded picture for the specific charge in front of you, with a downloadable CSV.
Open the Florida charge-disposition data study →Reference
For the full breakdown of the recorded disposition shares by charge category and judicial circuit, with the methodology and a downloadable CSV, see the Florida charge-disposition data study. For the full set of Florida charge references, start at the Florida criminal-defense references hub.
Common questions
- What share of Florida criminal charges end in dismissal?
- In the public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency Clerk-of-Court data (snapshot 2026-06-21), across 4,273,369 charge dispositions, 4.7% were resolved by a court-recorded dismissal and a further 7.4% by pre-trial diversion, while 84.4% ended in a conviction (adjudicated guilty or adjudication withheld) and 0.5% in an acquittal. These are descriptive, uncontrolled rates over past records. They are not adjusted for charge severity, evidence strength, criminal history, or case facts, they do not measure any prosecutor, office, or court, and they are not a drop rate any specific case should expect. This is general legal information, not legal advice about any charge.
- Is a dismissal rate the same as a prosecutor's declination rate?
- No. This is court-disposition data: the recorded resolution of each charge, not the state attorney's charging decision. The source Disposition field contains no nolle prosequi or no information value, so the study reports only the dismissal, diversion, and acquittal families it can verify from the record. A charge a prosecutor never filed, or dropped before a disposition was entered, is not what the dismissal share above measures. Treat the figures as how filed charges were resolved by the court, not as a measure of how often prosecutors decline to charge.
- How are the disposition outcomes categorized?
- Each charge is placed in one of four mutually exclusive court-disposition families, with an other or procedural remainder so each group sums to 100 percent. Dismissed covers dismissals including speedy-trial and restitution dismissals and decline-to-adjudicate. Diversion is pre-trial diversion. Acquitted includes acquittal and acquittal by reason of insanity. Convicted covers adjudicated guilty and adjudication withheld, because both are outcomes on a proven charge. The categories are built from verbatim Disposition values in the source data, not inferred, and the study documents the exact values in each family.
- Can these dismissal figures predict whether my charge will be dropped?
- No. The rates describe how a large, mixed population of past charges was resolved; they cannot predict any specific case. Whether a particular charge is dismissed, diverted, or proven turns on the offense, the evidence, the defendant's history, and the individual facts, none of which the aggregate holds constant. A higher recorded dismissal share in a charge category does not raise the odds in any one case, because the categories differ systematically in what kinds of charges and case postures they contain. Use the data for orientation, not as a probability for a real case.
- Where does the Florida disposition data come from and how current is it?
- It is drawn from the public FDLE Criminal Justice Data Transparency Clerk-of-Court extract (snapshot 2026-06-21), which reports the recorded disposition of each charge. The analysis covers 4,273,369 charge dispositions across 10 charge categories. Every figure on the companion data study is reproducible from that public source, and any cell with fewer than 10 charges is suppressed for reliability. The dispositions are pooled over their full recorded span and are not time-normalized, so charging and diversion practice changed across the period.
This guide is general legal information for practitioners, not legal advice, and the figures are descriptive aggregates over past public records, not a prediction of any specific case. Confirm every figure against the current data study and the record in front of you before relying on it.