Yesterday's Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole

Hadar Aviram

Univ of California Press, Feb 18, 2020 - Social Science - 296 pages

In 1969, the world was shocked by a series of murders committed by Charles Manson and his “family” of followers. Although the defendants were sentenced to death in 1971, their sentences were commuted to life with parole in 1972; since 1978, they have been regularly attending parole hearings. Today all of the living defendants remain behind bars.
 
Relying on nearly fifty years of parole hearing transcripts, as well as interviews and archival materials, Hadar Aviram invites readers into the opaque world of the California parole process—a realm of almost unfettered administrative discretion, prison programming inadequacies, high-pitched emotions, and political pressures. Yesterday’s Monsters offers a fresh longitudinal perspective on extreme punishment.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• How the Manson Family: 56
• Understanding the Crime of Commitment: 80
• the Inmates Postrelease Plans: 180
• Notes: 223
• Index: 267

About the author

Hadar Aviram is Thomas Miller Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She is the author of Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment and a coeditor of The Legal Process and the Promise of Justice. She is a frequent media commentator and runs the California Correctional Crisis blog.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Yesterday's Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole
• Author: Hadar Aviram
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Univ of California Press, 2020
• ISBN: 0520291557, 9780520291553
• Length: 296 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Criminology; True Crime / Historical; True Crime / Murder / General