ABSTRACT:
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.
BIO:
Professor Hadar Aviram (UC Hastings) specializes in criminal justice, civil rights, law and politics, and social movements, and her research employs socio-legal perspectives and methodologies. Her first book Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment (UC Press, 2015, winner of the CHOICE Award for Academic Titles) analyzed the impact of the financial crisis on the American correctional landscape. Her most recent book Yesterday’s Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole (UC Press, 2020) examines the California parole process through 50 years of parole transcripts in the Manson Family cases. She served as the President of the Western Society of Criminology and on the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association, and is currently the Book Review Editor of the Law & Society Review.
