Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Training Academy (NVCJTA) Exam 1 Practice

Consecutive sentences are served one after another. When a defendant has multiple sentences, being ordered to run consecutively means you complete the first sentence before starting the next, and the total time is the sum of all sentences. For example, a 3-year sentence for one offense and a 2-year sentence for another would total 5 years if served consecutively. If the sentences were concurrent, they would run at the same time, so the total would be the length of the longest sentence (3 years in that example). The other options don’t describe this sequencing: being served at the same time refers to concurrent service, and the remaining choices aren’t about how jail time is stacked.