What is indeterminate sentencing?
Utah has an indeterminate sentencing system. As used in Utah, this means that when a judge chooses to sentence an offender to prison, the judge sentences the offender to a range of time rather than a specific amount of the time. The ranges are established by statute. The Board of Pardons and Parole decides how long the offender will actually remain in prison. This system is called indeterminate because at the time of sentencing the exact amount of time that the offender will spend in prison is not known. Indeterminate sentencing encourages offenders to take responsibility for their lives because their release dates depend, in part, on how they behave while in prison and on improvements they make while in prison. Indeterminate sentencing also allows release decisions to reflect the seriousness of an individual crime or offender.
