The standard cost of being on probation in St. Johns County is $55.00 a month, and it has been that since Jan. 5 of this year.

Two administrative orders set it. CR-2025-027-SC covers misdemeanor probation and CR-2025-028-SC covers felony supervision, and both were signed on Nov. 5, 2025 by Leah R. Case, chief judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, which is Flagler, Putnam, St. Johns and Volusia counties. Both orders were directed to be recorded in all four.

The misdemeanor order says in its own recitals why it exists. It records that the chief judge “has determined that an increase to the standard monthly cost of supervision amount is warranted,” and it sets the figure at $55.00 for anyone placed on misdemeanor probation in the four counties on or after Jan. 5, 2026.

The statutory floor underneath that figure is lower. Section 948.09(1)(b), Florida Statutes, requires that a person placed on misdemeanor probation by a county court contribute not less than $40 per month, as decided by the sentencing court, to the entity providing the supervision. The order sets the standard amount above that floor, and the statute leaves the sentencing court able to decide it.

The felony order reaches a different payee and arrives at the same number. It applies to people placed under the supervision of the Florida Department of Corrections on or after Jan. 5, 2026, and it sets the cost of supervision at $55.00 per month “in the absence of any specific amount set by the sentencing judge.” Section 948.09(1)(a)1 requires that the payment not exceed the actual per diem cost of the supervision, and s. 948.09(1)(a)2 adds a separate $2-per-month surcharge on each felony offender, which the statute directs to correctional probation officers’ training and equipment.

The felony order also records what happens when the money does not arrive, and it sets out a sequence. The sentencing judge may waive the fee where the judge is of the opinion that the defendant does not possess the ability to pay it. Where there has been no waiver and a defendant does not pay, a supervising officer who believes the defendant can pay is to report that failure in a timely fashion.

Two further requirements in that order do not turn on ability to pay at all. A failure to pay supervision fees, or court-ordered costs other than restitution, is to be reported no later than 120 days before the term of supervision expires. A failure to pay restitution is treated separately and is to be reported in a timely fashion. The order requires in each case that the supervising officer substantiate the report.

What the previous amount was is not on the published record

Each of the two orders names the order it replaces on its own reference line, and the circuit reuses the sequence number when it replaces one, so the lineage is legible in the numbering. The misdemeanor order, CR-2025-027-SC, rescinds CR-2018-027-SC. The felony order, CR-2025-028-SC, rescinds CR-2017-028-SC.

Neither of the rescinded orders is in the collection the circuit publishes. A search of that collection for each order number returns nothing, and a search for the word supervision returns three orders, which are the two signed in November 2025 and one titled Unclaimed Restitution Collected by Probation Supervision Entities.

That third one is numbered CR-2017-026-SC, which is the same year as one of the two orders that is missing. The collection carries 157 orders in all and it keeps orders numbered as far back as 2017, so what is absent here is not absent because of its age. It is absent because it was rescinded, and the circuit publishes what is in force.

What that leaves unavailable to a reader is bounded and it is specific: the figure each of these orders replaced, and the date the cost of supervision last moved before Jan. 5 of this year, are not on the record the circuit publishes.

The orders themselves supply the direction of the change and not its size. The misdemeanor order calls itself an increase. The felony order does not describe itself either way.

The same collection sets the price of getting out before a judge sees you

A third order in the same collection, CR-2026-002-SC, signed Dec. 31, 2025, adopts the state’s uniform bond schedule by reference for use throughout the circuit. Its recitals record that the state supreme court issued the order establishing that schedule, numbered AOSC25-69, on Dec. 17, 2025, and made it effective Jan. 1, 2026.

The circuit’s order is careful about how far the schedule reaches, and it says so twice. The schedule applies, in the order’s words, “only when the police, county jail, or pretrial release employees exercise their discretion to release a person on bond before that person’s first appearance hearing.” The order also records that the schedule “is not intended to, and does not in any manner, bind judges when conducting first appearances or making bail determinations.”

A separate sentence in the same order preserves the use of a notice to appear under Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.125, which is the route by which somebody is released with no bond amount set at all.

The figures in that schedule are the state supreme court’s and not this circuit’s, and the order adopts them by reference rather than reprinting them.

Nothing the circuit has published since the two November orders touches the cost of supervision, and the $55.00 figure applies to anyone placed on supervision from Jan. 5 of this year onward. The Tattler will report the next order that moves it.

A criminal charge is an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The Tattler tracks the cases it reports and publishes the outcome, including when charges are dropped or reduced. If you are named in this story and the case has resolved, write to corrections@stjohnstattler.org and we will update it.