Non-Prison Sanctions
Increasing the number of sentence points below which the court is prohibited from imposing a state prison sentence for certain offenders and is instead required to impose a nonstate prison sanction.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, legal and advocacy 501(c)(4) organization and freedom's watchdog in the Sunshine State.
Florida's 2020 legislative session begins January 14, 2020, and ends sixty-days later March 13, 2020. During this legislative session, we will work on a broad range of issues including, but not limited to: criminal justice, free speech, reproductive freedom, immigrants’ rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
The ACLU of Florida is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to protecting and strengthening the civil rights and liberties of all Floridians. As a nonprofit membership organization with over 130,000 members and supporters in Florida and more than 1.6 million supporters nationwide, we advance this mission through litigation, advocacy, and education. Visit our webpage to read about our 2020 legislative priorities.
Do you want to help protect civil rights and civil liberties in Florida? You can also check out our Legislative Advocacy Toolkit, sign up to receive email updates and action alerts, volunteer with us, and return to this web page regularly to stay up to date on our legislative priorities in 2020.
We are monitoring hundreds of bills that span the breadth of the ACLU’s policy concerns. Below is a representative sample of several of the bills that have been filed that we will be actively working on throughout this legislative session. The list includes bills that we will proactively attempt to pass and those that we will actively defend against. This list is not all-inclusive, and instead is a representative sample of bills that either pose significant threats to civil rights and civil liberties, or that create opportunities to advance constitutional and civil rights.
Increasing the number of sentence points below which the court is prohibited from imposing a state prison sentence for certain offenders and is instead required to impose a nonstate prison sanction.
Increasing the prison-sentence threshold from 48 points to 60 points, thus providing that individuals who receive fewer than 60 points may receive a sanction other than prison (e.g., community control, probation, supervision, diversion).
Allows for downward departure from sentence for mitigating circumstance of substance abuse.
Increasing the number of sentence points below which the court is prohibited from imposing a state prison sentence for certain offenders and is instead required to impose a nonstate prison sanction.
Increasing the prison-sentence threshold from 22 to 44 points points for certain offenders, thus providing that individuals who receive fewer than 44 points must receive a sanction other than prison (e.g., community control, probation, supervision, diversion).
Retroactively applying recent beneficial reforms to mandatory sentences for aggravated assault and certain drug trafficking offenses.