I would like to ask a question regarding life sentence (and I hope it's the right place to ask it).
I live in Greece where life sentence is the heavier sentence a convict can get. But in fact life sentence is not a very accurate term since it's been restricted by law that the maximum imprisonment for a crime is 25 years. Since there is also some terms for early release if 3/5 of sentence have been executed (and some other factors also) or in some cases 4/5 this actual time is further reduced.
Data from wikipedia are not really up to date I think, at least for Greece that is. As I mentioned the maximum imprisonment for Greece is 25 years (for a single crime). Some facts about Greece and time imprisonments are given here (sadly in Greek only).
I am not familiar with legal system in other countries but since I have a rough (biased probably) idea of the US legal system I think that in this country there is not an official upper limit in the time of life imprisonment (although I guess after many years, maybe 50-60 years I don't know, many prisoners are released).
My question is since actual life imprisonment in Greece is about 16-20 years in most cases (there some cases where it could reach 25 years if the terms are not met for early release) what about actual life imprisonment in other countries? Is there a law that in fact convert life time to a specific years in prison?