Do the Manson girls deserve parole?

[Kitsune]

There are several girls of the Manson family who have been model prisoners for decades.
Most have been eligible for parole many times (upwards of twenty times)
Many were around twenty when they committed their crimes and now are sixty or older
Should they be allowed parole?

Just kind of a random thought

[Simon_Jester]

It would not be unreasonable to let them go, in my opinion, although... honestly, where would they go? About the only thing they could do that would give them a realistic shot at a livelihood would be to publish Confessions of a Murder-Cultist or whatever.

[Kitsune]

It would not be unreasonable to let them go, in my opinion, although... honestly, where would they go? About the only thing they could do that would give them a realistic shot at a livelihood would be to publish Confessions of a Murder-Cultist or whatever.

Even living off of welfare would cost tax payers less money than prison. Maybe some sort of volunteer work?

[Raw Shark]

There are several girls of the Manson family who have been model prisoners for decades.
Most have been eligible for parole many times (upwards of twenty times)
Many were around twenty when they committed their crimes and now are sixty or older
Should they be allowed parole?

Just kind of a random thought

I'd say that it should depend on what they were convicted of, whether they've ever shown remorse, etc, like any other parole hearing. I'd be surprised if any of them who were actually model prisoners and didn't go down for some horrific crimes were still locked up just because they were "of the Manson Family," considering that Manson disciples Squeaky Fromme (who attacked another inmate with a claw hammer and escaped once to visit Charlie while incarcerated) and Sara Jane Moore were convicted of trying to whack Jerry Ford while he was in office as POTUS, and have both been out for 4-5 years.

[mr friendly guy]

They didn't give Sharon Tate mercy when she begged them to allow her to give birth to her child then letting them kill her. Why should they deserve it? Sally Atkins died in prison suffering from brain cancer with her face puffed up (likely from steroid use to suppress the swelling in the brain). Tough shit. Eventually the others will die in prison then those sad individuals otherwise known as their advocates will find some other way to draw attention to their pathetic lives.

[Kitsune]

They didn't give Sharon Tate mercy when she begged them to allow her to give birth to her child then letting them kill her. Why should they deserve it? Sally Atkins died in prison suffering from brain cancer with her face puffed up (likely from steroid use to suppress the swelling in the brain). Tough shit. Eventually the others will die in prison then those sad individuals otherwise known as their advocates will find some other way to draw attention to their pathetic lives.

You can never bring a life back but I see prison as a corrective measure not vengeance. . . .
The idea is to make somebody who will not offend again.

I know as well that the Kitsune at age 20 is not the Kitsune at at 45.
I doubt any of the women are really the same people either.

[Broomstick]

Another reason for prison is to separate those who would harm others from those others. If the parole board thinks they might re-offend that is a reason to deny parole.

Whether these particular people would re-offend I have no way to know.

[Raw Shark]

There are several girls of the Manson family who have been model prisoners for decades.
Most have been eligible for parole many times (upwards of twenty times)
Many were around twenty when they committed their crimes and now are sixty or older

Actually, can we get some specifics on these claims, please? I can't think of anybody from the Manson family who is alive, incarcerated, and female besides Patricia "Personally tackled and stabbed Abigail Folger / Said it felt right at trial" Krenwinkel and Leslie "Personally stabbed Rosemary LaBianca / Pooped on the crime scene" Van Houten, both of whom giggled repeatedly during the trial, including when grisly crime scene photos were shown, and who seem, to my unprofessional eye, to be a couple of complete fucking worst-case-scenario psychos who do society no benefit by walking free ever again. I'm going to assume, from your use of "girls" (which at best refers to women in their 60s here) that you meant to exclude Bobby "Tortured a guy for days before killing him for two cars" Beausoleil and Charles "Tex / Did most of the actual stabbing" Watson.

[Kitsune]

Pulled from here
http://jezebel.com/5334444/the-manson-f ... ears-later
Leslie Van Houten
Van Houten, who will turn 60 this month, is in the California Institution for Women, where she's spent the past 39 years. While there, she's become a model prisoner. She's taught other illiterate inmates to read, stitched a portion of the AIDS quilt, made bedding for the homeless, and recorded books on tape for the blind, all while holding down various jobs as a clerk for different members of the prison staff. Of her remorse over the murders she says, "It's not easy. If anything, the older I get, the harder it is. I took away all that life."

Patricia Krenwinkel
She's in AA and NA, and has also taught illiterate prisoners how to read, gives dance lessons, and participates in a service-dog training program. She has been denied parole 11 times.
[While I consider AA and NA useless, it shows an effort to do something]

[Raw Shark]

Pulled from here
http://jezebel.com/5334444/the-manson-f ... ears-later
Leslie Van Houten
Van Houten, who will turn 60 this month, is in the California Institution for Women, where she's spent the past 39 years. While there, she's become a model prisoner. She's taught other illiterate inmates to read, stitched a portion of the AIDS quilt, made bedding for the homeless, and recorded books on tape for the blind, all while holding down various jobs as a clerk for different members of the prison staff. Of her remorse over the murders she says, "It's not easy. If anything, the older I get, the harder it is. I took away all that life."

Patricia Krenwinkel
She's in AA and NA, and has also taught illiterate prisoners how to read, gives dance lessons, and participates in a service-dog training program. She has been denied parole 11 times.
[While I consider AA and NA useless, it shows an effort to do something]

Those are swell things that both of those gibbering lunatic murderers can continue to do in prison to possibly assist redeemable inmates and attempt to squeeze some good out of their lives, but it doesn't answer my request for clarification on your "several / many" claims. If those two psychos are all you've got, fuck 'em in the ear.

[Kitsune]

Those are swell things that both of those gibbering lunatic murderers can continue to do in prison to possibly assist redeemable inmates and attempt to squeeze some good out of their lives, but it doesn't answer my request for clarification on your "several / many" claims. If those two psychos are all you've got, fuck 'em in the ear.

I am using the Manson family as an example but how many blacks during the 1970s were involved in a gang driveby?
They were about twenty at the time but now are sixty or so years old. Does it really make sense to retain them in prison?

With the Manson family in particular, I suspect that if I fell into a cult, I could have ended up doing something much like those who followed Manson. Don't think any of us are immune to that kind of insanity. Problem is that the human animal is only partly rational.

[Broomstick]

A lot of bad people can manage to behave themselves in jail which, less face it, is a far more regulated environment than the outside world.

They were sentenced to life. I'm happy at least a couple of them have found some worthwhile tasks while in jail, but I fail to see where their good deeds outweigh the multiple murders they committed.

[Kitsune]

A lot of bad people can manage to behave themselves in jail which, less face it, is a far more regulated environment than the outside world.

They were sentenced to life. I'm happy at least a couple of them have found some worthwhile tasks while in jail, but I fail to see where their good deeds outweigh the multiple murders they committed.

I just want to add that it is perfectly azcceptable to me to disagree. . . .I consider this to be a hard issue.
I tend to consider that people can change and that the person 40 years down the line the person is not the same person.
Sometimes issues are not easy. Just trying to avoid viceral reactions.

[LaCroix]

Well,I think these people act mostly like like young children.

They do behave perfectly well while there is someone to supervise them.
As soon as they are out of sight, mayhem happens.

[Kitsune]

Well,I think these people act mostly like like young children.

They do behave perfectly well while there is someone to supervise them.
As soon as they are out of sight, mayhem happens.

Curious, have you ever heard of the Milgram Experiments and its replications?

[Simon_Jester]

I am using the Manson family as an example but how many blacks during the 1970s were involved in a gang driveby?

They were about twenty at the time but now are sixty or so years old. Does it really make sense to retain them in prison?

Depends. How'd they end up with life in prison?

With the Manson family in particular, I suspect that if I fell into a cult, I could have ended up doing something much like those who followed Manson. Don't think any of us are immune to that kind of insanity. Problem is that the human animal is only partly rational.

If it were that easy to completely lose it and join a murder cult, it'd happen more often. The very fact that the Manson cult is unusual suggests that there has to be something unusual about you before you join a death-cult. That something might be "gullible" rather than "evil," or any of a lot of things. But it seems to have to be there.

Well,I think these people act mostly like like young children.

They do behave perfectly well while there is someone to supervise them.
As soon as they are out of sight, mayhem happens.

Curious, have you ever heard of the Milgram Experiments and its replications?

I think LaCroix's point is that:

There are people who can behave in prison, but not anywhere else. These people may be in some way... odd. Their oddity might come in a lot of forms. Maybe they're super-susceptible to the pressures that made Milgram's experiments possible. I mean, it might be that in the 1960s you could get 60-70% of the population to deliver a series of electric shocks that people were trying to trick them into thinking they were lethal. But this involved the use of a lot of special variables.

One, the fake "experiment" was supposed to be an official thing taking place under official auspices, where legal accountability would presumably be in place. Two, the 'killings' were not occurring with the simulated 'victim' in the same room as the subject, with the subject stabbing or cutting the victim repeatedly. Third, there was no attempt to make the same person kill over and over.

The Manson cultists were killing at the behest of a private citizen, in extremely bloody and brutal incidents where they interacted directly with the victims and used knives rather than push-buttons in another room. And they did this repeatedly.

This suggests that they may be just a little unusual. The Milgram experiments prove that more people can be induced to commit evil by an authority figure than we might think. But they don't mean everyone is absolved from responsibility at all times. Nor do they mean all people are equally gullible when it comes to being persuaded to commit evils.

[Raw Shark]

Those are swell things that both of those gibbering lunatic murderers can continue to do in prison to possibly assist redeemable inmates and attempt to squeeze some good out of their lives, but it doesn't answer my request for clarification on your "several / many" claims. If those two psychos are all you've got, fuck 'em in the ear.

I am using the Manson family as an example [snip]

That really wasn't clear in the title and OP.

but how many blacks during the 1970s were involved in a gang driveby?
They were about twenty at the time but now are sixty or so years old.

Apples and oranges. Lots of Manson cultists who were "involved" in violence are free now.

Does it really make sense to retain them in prison?

Depends. That's why we have parole hearings.

With the Manson family in particular, I suspect that if I fell into a cult, I could have ended up doing something much like those who followed Manson. Don't think any of us are immune to that kind of insanity. Problem is that the human animal is only partly rational.

[I am very familiar with Milgram, for the record] Manson had a bunch of cultists. They didn't all personally stab an innocent woman to death and laugh when shown photos of the body at trial, but Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten did. People like those two are why we have life prison sentences in the first place: Because they have conclusively demonstrated that they should not be playing with the other kids anymore, ever.

[Raw Shark]

[snip] They were sentenced to life.

They were both sentenced to death, actually, largely because they acted like such sick fucks at the trial, but it was turned into life administratively when California abolished the death penalty.

I'm happy at least a couple of them have found some worthwhile tasks while in jail, but I fail to see where their good deeds outweigh the multiple murders they committed.

Nitpick: Van Houten and Krenwinkel killed one person each, but otherwise, yeah, this.

[mr friendly guy]

Patricia Krenwinkel
She's in AA and NA, and has also taught illiterate prisoners how to read, gives dance lessons, and participates in a service-dog training program. She has been denied parole 11 times.
[While I consider AA and NA useless, it shows an effort to do something]

From her 2004 parole hearing.

http://www.cielodrive.com/patricia-kren ... g-2004.php

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: Do you work Step Eight?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Is Eight a list of all the - people that I've caused harm to? Yes I have.

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: And who is on top of the list?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Probably myself, first

.

That's right. The top of Krenwinkel list of people she has harmed is not Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowsk or Jay Sebring. But herself. Not her victims, whose life was cut short, but her poor self who is stuck in jail.

The self aggrandizement of the bitch. To borrow a psychiatric phrase, the person displays "lack of insight."

This doesn't look like remorse, and frankly I fail to see how it benefits society to let someone who has such a lack of empathy and has committed murder back out.

[Broomstick]

[snip] They were sentenced to life.

They were both sentenced to death, actually, largely because they acted like such sick fucks at the trial, but it was turned into life administratively when California abolished the death penalty.

The technical term is "commuted", as in "the sentence of death was commuted to life in prison".

[LaCroix]

Simon got it right.

These people behave well in prison because:

They don't have easy access to weapons.
They are supervised by people who know that they are capable of, and confrontations are actively avoided by the wardens.
Their life is marginally better when they behave as expected - benefits for being a good prisoner.

Once they are out and have to deal with life by themselves, and the crappy hand it will deal to them as ex-longtime-convicts ( of old age, no skills, no savings, no health-care), there is no one to guarantee they don't snap when someone crosses them the wrong way. In fact, I believe that at this age, spending the rest of their life in prison is actually a mercy to them comparing what they would need to deal with outside.

[Raw Shark]

[snip] They were sentenced to life.

They were both sentenced to death, actually, largely because they acted like such sick fucks at the trial, but it was turned into life administratively when California abolished the death penalty.

The technical term is "commuted", as in "the sentence of death was commuted to life in prison".

SDN, where people who know a lot about murder cults and people who know a lot of big words learn from each other! ;]

[Burak Gazan]

Never
EVER

Not when they growing fucking tangerines on Mars
Fuck them all, their next stop should be Dis

[Kitsune]

This suggests that they may be just a little unusual. The Milgram experiments prove that more people can be induced to commit evil by an authority figure than we might think. But they don't mean everyone is absolved from responsibility at all times. Nor do they mean all people are equally gullible when it comes to being persuaded to commit evils.

I clipped a lot but kind of wanted to start here. . . . .I did not say that they should be absolved of all debt
I just consider that after 40 years in prison, their debt is paid. Well, not completely paid, that is never really possible but enough to be released from prison.

Now, one of the Mansion family tried to kill the president of the United States. She was released in 2009 and has been living quietly for five years now. If she had been with the other women at the time, I am pretty sure she would have been a party to the murders as well. She was lucky she got caught and it became attempted murder.

Part of my argument is that I think a great many people could potentially fall into the same situation as those women and find themselves going along with the leader. Maybe me to be blunt. Why can find cases of whole cults committing suicide because of a charismatic leader. Is there something actually different about them or do we all have the seeds inside us? I think it is the latter.

[Kitsune]

From her 2004 parole hearing.

http://www.cielodrive.com/patricia-kren ... g-2004.php

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: Do you work Step Eight?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Is Eight a list of all the - people that I've caused harm to? Yes I have.

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: And who is on top of the list?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Probably myself, first

.

That's right. The top of Krenwinkel list of people she has harmed is not Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowsk or Jay Sebring. But herself. Not her victims, whose life was cut short, but her poor self who is stuck in jail.

The self aggrandizement of the bitch. To borrow a psychiatric phrase, the person displays "lack of insight."

This doesn't look like remorse, and frankly I fail to see how it benefits society to let someone who has such a lack of empathy and has committed murder back out.

We are all selfish bastards and bitches if we will admit it or not.