system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do certain criminals get punished for 200+ years instead of just life?
gpt
There's a few things at work here.  

Prisoners can get "paroled" - which means that, if they behave well, they can get their sentence reduced.  If you're sentenced to 200 years, you're still serving 100 years, even if you behave well enough to get *half your sentence* taken off.

Part of it is that people are often sentenced for breaking many laws at the same time they committed a "single" criminal act.  Each of these carries its own prison sentence.  This means that, even if a criminal gets one of the charges thrown out in appeals court, they still have to stay in jail.