You conveniently stripped out the context of my quote, which is that I was talking about Van Houten before she had committed any crime at all.
We regularly restrict people’s freedom based on what they might do if the probability appears high enough. Crazy people get locked up. Suicidal people may be locked up so that they can’t harm themselves. And yes, we put people in prison partly on the basis that people who commit crimes are likely to commit more crimes in the future.
You can try to deny this, but it’s trivial to see in the case of parole itself. Parole is rejected when it’s thought there’s a high risk of recidivism. We keep people locked up until either their term ends or they are deemed to be safe enough.
It’s even more obvious in the particular case of Breivik in the Netherlands, where although he is only sentenced to 21 years, the punishment can be extended if he is thought to still be a risk.
What we don’t do, of course, is restrict the freedom of people who have shown no evidence of being a danger to others. Perhaps one day we’ll have the technology to more accurately determine this. We’ll have to reevaluate the current system when that day arrives.
Seems like you’re finally getting it. To the extent that she “deserves” anything, she deserves to be treated the same as every other citizen of the US. That means that she should have the same chance at parole as anyone else under the same conditions.
Van Houten was not a good person at 19. She may or may not be a good person now. But if others with the same sentence and the same good behavior would have been released already, so should she.
Do prisoners who are seniors and who’ve been incarcerated for more than a generation usually wind up in a halfway house? She seems to be in decent health so a nursing home wouldn’t be necessary, but there’s hardly any way she could be expected to become self supporting, at least not soon, nor would she have a chance to build up retirement and her social security would never be much above minimal, so I’m wondering how she’ll live.
Would she be allowed to accept financial assistance from any friends or family she has? My understanding is that she is forbidden to accept money for any interviews or book deal that deal with the crime, and if she did it would probably go to the LaBianca family anyway.
Her victim, Rosemary LaBianca, was a very impressive woman, a self made millionaire by the age of 40 in the age of Mad Men “office girls”. Because she lacked the fame of Sharon Tate her story is often overlooked.
[QUOTE=Just Asking Questions]
They WERE both sentenced to death. Their sentences were commuted when the death penalty was abolished in CA in 1972. They should have been commuted to life without parole rather than life with possibility of parole, but they weren’t, which is why we are here now.
[/QUOTE]
Synapse misfire on my part: I meant to write “had she been executed before death sentences were commuted”, I would not have considered it injustice.
Speaking of Manson, he seems to be in phenomenal health considering he’s spent 65 years behind bars on prison food and been set on fire and abused drugs and was a smoker for many years IIRC. A tragedy that he is such a waste of good genes. (One of his biological sons committed suicide, allegedly because he could not take the stigma of being Manson’s child even if he had no relationship with him, though who knows; a singer named Matthew Roberts claims to be one of Manson’s biological spawn but is likely hype.)
Charles “Tex” Watson fathered four children from conjugal visits, all raised on welfare. He states his regret and his dedication to Jesus now yet a few years ago filed a motion to block the release of voice recordings in which he confessed to murders other than the ones for which he was convicted.
I have no faith in the ability of parole boards to make such judgements accurately or without bias, and for this and other reasons am deeply skeptical of the concept of parole.
People should be sentenced on the basis of what they did. Neither good conduct on prison, nor anyone’s guesses about their possible post-prison conduct, can change the reality of their deeds, so these should not be allowed to change their sentence.
Alternatively, if people are to earn credit toward early release, it should be a standardized system, requiring more than untroublesome conduct as a prisoner, but actual affirmative deeds. And it would have to be available to all prisoners equally.
Tex is dumb as dirt, probably one of the most fucked up of the bunch, and I don’t care if he’s “found Jesus”, and out of all of them (well, besides ol’ Chuck himself) the one I hope remains behind bars until the end of his days. He and Atkins were the ones who held Tate down and stabbed her while she begged for the life of her unborn child, laughing the whole time they did so. And that fucker gets conjugal visits?
Although I disagree with this, it’s at least question that has an answer–we can look at the historical decisions that parole boards have made and can evaluate their success, looking at recidivism and other metrics. It’s a question worth having a discussion about (though probably in another thread). Parole boards are certainly not perfect.
Of course one must look at the consequences of ending parole, such as that our (already overwhelmed) prison system would have to support far more prisoners–that is, unless sentencing guidelines were drastically reduced.
None of this follows from your first statement, and is just yet another restatement of Little Nemo’s “Justice is when … bad things happen to bad people”.
According to this artcle - the panel’s recommendation goes to the whole Parole Board, which has 120 days to think about it, then if they approve, it goes to the Governor, who has another 30 days to give final approval.
Kind of a trashy cite, but they’re probably right about something like this.
There’s a different set of rules when your case is politicized.
It shouldn’t be that way. But justice often gets twisted to the pressure of politics .
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I guess it’s a safe bet Van Houten will die in prison. It’s unlikely any California will have the integrity to ignore politics and do what’s right
Free will is an incoherent concept, so punishing somebody to hurt them per se (i.e. for revenge) is ethically indefensible. As with all of us, she could not have made other choices in precisely identical circumstance. Unless you believe in magic, our brains are purely physical computing machines, the product of genes and environment, and there is no magical cutoff age where they become something qualitatively different. Mature brains have no more free will than immature brains.
This does not *excuse *bad actions, but I think it does imply that the only valid reasons for her continued incarceration are:
(1) To protect society from her future harmful actions;
(2) Deterrence of others.
This thread has discussed at length that most criminals convicted of murder eventually get parole. They may serve 20 or more years but they do get out.
Van Houten has served more than 40 years. Been a model prisoner. Meet every requirement for parole. IIRC she’s served far more time than most people convicted of murder. Then a weak willed politician caves into public pressure.
Am I surprised? Not at all. That’s the screwed up system we live under. Is it Justice? Not at all. She’ll die in prison only because her case is notorious. Spawning books, TV specials and movies.
I wonder what makes Jerry Brown (and Baker) think she’s dangerous? There doesn’t seem to be any reason to think she would be going around killing people now. Her actions were part of a group that does not exist now. Is there something I’m missing?