It might be that your actual sentence is 10 years, but the state may expect to send you to prison for the first 5 and have you live on probation or parole restrictions for the last 5. So the judge might tell you to serve 8 years in prison. That gives the state some years of leeway to both add time to your prison sentence for being difficult and to knock some off for being cooperative.
No matter which way you slice it, the sentence is still 10 years, and the state can decide how much of that is spent in prison, and how much outside as a less-than-entirely-free person.
If you can manage to serve your entire sentence in prison without actually committing additional crimes, you might be able to walk out the front gates and never have a single day of probation, but I put the likelihood of that ever happening at just above infinitesimal. People in prison would mostly rather be outside and on parole/probation.
You only need a judge's help to keep someone in prison past the actual length of their sentence.
IANAL and IHNBAP, so I may be up to 100% wrong about this.
No matter which way you slice it, the sentence is still 10 years, and the state can decide how much of that is spent in prison, and how much outside as a less-than-entirely-free person.
If you can manage to serve your entire sentence in prison without actually committing additional crimes, you might be able to walk out the front gates and never have a single day of probation, but I put the likelihood of that ever happening at just above infinitesimal. People in prison would mostly rather be outside and on parole/probation.
You only need a judge's help to keep someone in prison past the actual length of their sentence.
IANAL and IHNBAP, so I may be up to 100% wrong about this.