indeterminate sentence

American  

noun

Criminal Law.

1. a penalty, imposed by a court, that has relatively wide limits or no limits, as one of imprisonment for one to ten years.

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indeterminate sentence British  

noun

1. law a prison sentence the length of which depends on the prisoner's conduct

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Etymology

Origin of indeterminate sentence

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

indeterminate sentence

He was convicted and given an indeterminate sentence of one year to life and spent the next decade at California’s Soledad and San Quentin prisons, much of it in solitary confinement.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 24, 2022

Khan was originally given an indeterminate sentence in 2012, meaning one with no fixed end date.

From BBC ● Dec. 3, 2019

He was originally given an indeterminate sentence, with a minimum term of eight years in February 2012.

From The Guardian ● Nov. 29, 2019

Instead state prison administrators used the indeterminate sentence as a cudgel to pathologize prisoners’ grievances and encourage mindless submission to authority.

From Salon ● Dec. 27, 2018

For others, it was an indeterminate sentence of months or years.

From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover