indeterminate sentence

noun Criminal Law.

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

Origin of indeterminate sentence

First recorded in 1870–75

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for indeterminate sentence

Historical Examples of indeterminate sentence

The state has a parole law and an indeterminate-sentence law for convicts.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 6
Various

British Dictionary definitions for indeterminate sentence

indeterminate sentence

noun

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

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