Abstract
The Manson Family murders are widely considered some of the most notorious crimes in American history. Along with their perpetrators, these crimes have been the subject of many books, films, documentaries, and television specials. With the widespread interest in infamous and extreme crimes, there is little doubt that the Manson name alone will be one of the primary appeals of Yesterday’s Monsters for many potential readers, even if the crimes are not the focus of the book. Hadar Aviram, a professor of law at the University of California Hastings College of Law, argues that the infamy and timing of the Manson murders were a perfect storm of contextual elements that resulted in California altering their parole system to maximize punishment. Aviram bolsters her argument via her collection of various types of qualitative data, including things like relevant laws and pieces of California’s legal history, interviews with various practitioners and advocates who deal with parole in California, and transcripts from the parole hearings of members of the Manson Family. Through this information, Aviram shows the evolution of parole hearings’ requirements and unspoken expectations over the roughly half century that the Manson Family has been incarcerated.
The first few chapters of Yesterday’s Monsters serve as the foundation for the rest of the book. They begin by discussing a brief history of the parole process in California, the “extreme punishment trifecta” (EPT; p. 37), and the three main theories of the Manson Family’s murders. The EPT consists of the three most severe punishments in California’s criminal justice system: the death penalty, life without the possibility of parole, and life with the possibility of parole. Helter Skelter is the most pertinent of the three Manson Family theories. It was used to argue that the Family believed an apocalyptic race war would occur, resulting in them ruling the world. The nature of this theory as a weapon of the prosecution is discussed. Initially, the Manson Family were all sentenced to death. Their sentences were reduced to life with the possibility of parole after the Supreme Court of the United States put a temporary moratorium on capital punishment. Aviram continues by addressing the nature of parole hearings in California and discusses how the Manson cases were among the first parole hearings where prosecutors and co-victims attended and argued against parole, a practice which then spread to other cases.
Throughout the remainder of the book, Aviram discusses the heavy scrutiny faced by the Manson Family in their parole hearings and how the various parole boards involved used the concept of “insight” to keep the Family in prison. Aviram explains that insight is supposed to be about rehabilitation and remorse, but she also indicates that insight turns the parole hearing into a performance, where specific behaviors are dictated with little consistency. The parole boards in the Manson cases often order inmates to engage in contradictory or impossible tasks, whether it be recalling the minutiae of their crimes decades after the fact or insisting that they participate in programs that aren’t available. The failure of the inmate to do these things would then be declared a lack of insight.
Aviram then synthesizes all the aforementioned pieces of the book together to show how these developments in the handling of parole for the Manson Family have spread to the rest of California’s parole system and how this impact seems to be spreading to other parts of the country. Through the case study on the Manson Family, Aviram outlines the changes in California’s parole process over time and how it has become increasingly punitive. The author then concludes by arguing for changes to the parole process and parole board, including a focus on rehabilitation, evidence-based practices, and a reexamination of the practice of allowing prosecutors and victims to participate in parole hearings. Aviram claims that these changes would help make parole more attainable for those who are supposed to have the opportunity.
Overall, Yesterday’s Monsters is an interesting and engaging look at the history and practice of parole in the state of California. The author makes a compelling case for why the Manson Family was instrumental in shaping parole in California, which she exemplified through utilizing the Manson Family case as a framework for understanding issues within the parole system generally. At times, however, the book is overly philosophical with seemingly little reason. An example of this is how every chapter opens with a quote from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There is also a number of grammatical errors in the text, and—arguably—the book would flow better with the Helter Skelter chapter at the beginning. Still, these do little to detract from the overall quality of the book. Yesterday’s Monsters would be relevant for anyone interested in the parole process, but less appealing for someone interested solely in the Manson Family’s crimes themselves, as it only briefly addresses them. This lack of information about the Manson Family cases indicates one barrier to entry, which is that one likely needs to be somewhat familiar with the crimes to understand all the facets and intricacies of the book. That being said, Yesterday’s Monsters is informative enough to teach the complexities of the parole process to an undergraduate or graduate course (as it also provides some foundational information on the parole process)—though some background information on the crimes may be necessary.
