Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Determinate and Indeterminate Sentencing
Determinate sentence is a prison sentence with a defined period of time, which the convicted person will spend in jail or a correctional facility. The significant concept of this sentence is that this time cannot be altered by a parole board (Abadinsky, 2012). A sentence of one year in a state jail is determinate. This is because the convict will spend one year, and no more than that behind bars. The purpose of determinate sentence is to give a time period that the convict must serve and blocks any possibility of reduction of his or her jail term since the release dates are objective and specific.
On the other hand, an indeterminate sentence contains a range of years in which the convict will be imprisoned for and does not provide a specific length of a sentence. This means that the sentence does not provide specific release dates. The main concept of the indeterminate sentence is the provision left to the parole board to review the progress of a convict and determine his release dates (Champion, 2008). The purpose of the indeterminate sentence is to allow for a change of behavior of the convict and giving the parole board a change to monitor this achievement.
While each of the two serve different purposes and are effective in punishing, indeterminate sentencing is a better model for behavior rehabilitation. This is because an indeterminate sentence provides an opportunity for a person to change his or her behavior and so reduce the time spent in prison (Abadinsky, 2012). This is made possible by the opportunity provided by an indeterminate sentence to the parole board to determine the release dates of a prisoner based on his or her behavior change.
References
Abadinsky, H. (2012). Probation and parole: Theory and practice (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Champion, D. (2008). Sentencing: A Reference Handbook. California: ABC-CLIO