In England, does a 24 years sentence mean 24 years in prison?

If the sentence is for 12 months or more

For prison sentences of 12 months or more the person spends the first half of the sentence in prison and the second half in the community ‘on licence’.

If they break any licence conditions - eg they commit another crime - they could go back to prison.

If the sentence is under 12 months

For prison sentences under 12 months, the person’s normally released automatically halfway through.


Life sentences

If a person’s found guilty of murder, a court must give them a life sentence.

A court may choose to give a life sentence for serious offences like:

rape
armed robbery

A life sentence lasts for the rest of a person’s life – if they’re released
from prison and commit another crime they can be sent back to prison at any time.

Whole life term
A whole life term means there’s no minimum term set by the judge, and the person’s
never considered for release.

https://www.gov.uk/types-of-prison-sentence/determinate-prison-sentences-fixed-length-of-time

Thanks, must have been manslaughter or something then? They didn't say anything in English about the sentence, it was just text which may have been badly translated.

The murderer/manslaughterer was from Portugal. Surely they won't insist that he stays in the community for 12 years after he has been released?

nothing to do with manslaughter

What has it something to do with then? Donny said "If a person’s found guilty of murder, a court must give them a life sentence.", and he didn't get a life sentence.

I think the judge must have sentenced him to a minimum of 24 years, after that eligible for parole

he was given a life sentence, but not a full life sentence
full life means no possibility of release on parole

its a technicality really because as you say a life sentence doesn't really mean that in almost all cases

There's a 19 year old lad I know, because he used to play in my son's youth football team, in court at the moment charged with murder.  Clearly guilty

"In England and Wales, the average life sentence prisoner serves around 15 years before being paroled, although those convicted of exceptionally grave crimes remain behind bars for considerably longer; Ian Huntley was given a minimum term of 40 years."

Ok, maybe, but very bad translation in that case. The text in Swedish said "Juryn fann honom skyldig till mord och han dömdes till 24 års fängelse", which I would translate to "The jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to 24 years in prison." Doesn't say anything about "life". Maybe someone has seen the documentary? It was a BBC-documentary I think, and the murders happened in 2016.

Jun 11, 2018 -- 10:42AM, CLYDEBANK29 wrote:

There's a 19 year old lad I know, because he used to play in my son's youth football team, in court at the moment charged with murder.  Clearly guilty

for what motive?

It looks like a fight over the proceeds of a financial scam.