It seems since the person is already serving time, what good does it do since no additional time will be served?
Does it effect a parole chance?
I think the idea is to give the judge leeway; if you are convicted of multiple crimes, the judge can decide that you don’t need to serve each term individually, and the longest sentence is sufficiently long. I’m sure some Doper versed in criminal law (if that’s the right area) will be along shortly.
For one thing, multiple sentences provide a backup in case one of the convictions should be overturned.
It does affect parole and other administrative issues as others have stated. And there’s a philosophical point as well. It’s saying that the convicted received a punishment for the crime even if it was mostly symbolic. Suppose somebody had already been convicted of several murders and was serving a life sentence. Then suppose they killed somebody else. Should we say that there’s no point in doing anything about the new murder because the convict is already going to spend the rest of his life in prison? Society will retry the murder and convict him again and give him an additional sentence to show that the victim’s life had value and society will impose a punishment on the person who took that life.
I read the thread title and thought “gee, THERE’s a grammatical term I’ve never encountered before, let me see what it means…”
Some of us are spending far too much time doing language analysis.
Heh. You’re not alone. I came in to find out what a “concurrent sentence” was. :smack: I swear I was NOT a Grammar Nazi before I found the Dope. 
By the way, is there a limit to the number of smilies per post in GQ? 
Think of a vocal group singing the same lyrics, with melody and harmony.
There’s also a point of justice here. Suppose someone is convicted of stealing a loaf of bread. It’s a misdemeanor, worth maybe a month in jail. The investigation, however, gives the police the big break they need to crack open a whole string of bread robberies, not to mention a half dozen cases of bubblegum theft and absconding with soda. Does the perp now deserve two or three years in jail? No, of course not. The whole haul, if it was taken in a single act, wouldn’t come close to a felony, so the judge makes the longest sentence one of, say, 90 days, and runs them all concurrently.
Band name.
“Concurrent Sentence”