A look at the a parole system of california through the sentencing of those involved in the manson family murders. Welcome to Tattered Cover live, our Virtual Events that we do here at Tattered Cover bookstore. Im the director of marketing and events at Tattered Cover, and im really excited for this event that we have today. I want to give you a couple updates about how Tattered Covers doing and what were up to because theres been changes all the time, and you should definitely be following us on multiple social Media Channels as well as signing up for our newsletter, thats the best and fastest way to get updates. So, for instance, we are now open for Curbside Pickup which is amazing and so awesome. Thank you for the continued support through your online orders. You can still order online, but now you can get Curbside Pickup. Our web site is now also open 24 7, yea, which means were getting caught up on orders. Were doing really well there, so thank you guys again for that. Browse our web site, were offering up recommendations all the time such as our book of the month, cookbook of the month and also all of these author events that we do. We have at least one bookseller if not more, and theres a reason as to why we pick these authors. You know, which leads me into why we do this. Arts is vitally important, but especially in crises like the one were facing now, you know, were here to affirm that Creative Work is essential, and we want to elevate it. Its always going to be our top priority at Tattered Cover. These authors have been chosen specifically because we love their work, and we cant stand the idea that they dont have a platform right now, and we think youre going to love it too. We believe entirely that our communities need books as much as independent bookstores need our neighbors business right now. And we know that Tattered Cover is a Community Space normally, even our author tonight was telling me earlier about how its always a muststop in denver. And while we cannot be physically together, were hoping that you guys can join us as a Virtual Community and we can provide that opportunity and connect with you all this way. Thank you for joining us tonight. Also to let you know this will be recorded on youtube, and closed captioning will be available. We have plenty of more live streams coming up, definitely check out our web site. We have an author for any of you who have some Young Readers out there, jessica kim, friday, may 22nd, and we also have will qualm kent krueger on thursday, may 28th. William. But the author we have today, im very excited, i just guys, my reading has expanded so much getting to do these author events, and this book is no exception. Im just so excited to pick her brain. Hadar avenue rim avarm the author of cheap on crime and the transformation of american punishment and coeditor of the legal process. Shes a frequent media commentator and runs the california correctional crisis blog. Were here to talk about her book, yesterdays monsters, and im going to be inviting hadar to join me. Let me get her connected, and well get this show on the road. Lets see, here we go. Hello welcome. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I know that youre a little bit behind, youre earlier than us, so thank you for hanging out with us before dinner time. [laughter] this is perfect. I have time. This is great. Yea, or im so glad. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh, its our pleasure, truly. Like we said in the intro, we really want to share your work, and thank you for taking the time to write this book. Why dont you give us a little summary of what yesterdays monsters is about, and then you have a presentation for us, yes . Sure. Yesterdays monsters talks about the parole process in california. Many of the people listening to us on you talking about have heard about the manson family members. And usually what you read about is the murders and the trial, and not a lot of people know what happened afterwards. And this book is based on 50 years work on all the parole transcripts, and through those stories i tell a 50year story arc of what happened with parole and with criminal justice and extreme punishment in california. Ah, and its so fascinating because, youre right, when we think manson family murders, bedefinitely dont go to we definitely dont go to what happened after the murders. Im going to hop off, and ill join us back for a q and a. While hadar is presenting, make sure you think of your questions. Take it away. Here we go. There we go. So this is actually a topic that i figure a lot of people are more interested in now because weve been hearing a lot about the question of whether to release people out of prison given what covid19 is doing inside prisons and all the people that are getting sick. And its opportunity for all of us think a little bit about how we feel about people who committed serious Violent Crime and what does the back door out of prison look like for people like that. So to give you a little bit of an idea of the extent of how many people get out on parole in california, im just going to start with a little bit of numbers. Thousands of people come up for parole every year, but only a very few get out. Just to kind of drive that point home again, this is the percentage of parole grants. You can see that sort of during the 9 0s, pretty much almost nobody got out. There were three governors that would not let anybody out, parole boards responded by not letting anybody out, and its only oncely brown became governors that the doors of jerry brown became governor that the doors of parole opened a little bit. What is parole really . It used to be the idea that you come up to be released from prison, and you give your word that youre not going to commit crime again, and then you are let out. In california and in the states that still have parole boards, basically the parole hearing looks Something Like this, so every prison would have a room that looks like this. Theres three parole commissioners, theyre all appointees of our governor, and there will be the inmate the person whos seeking parole trying to convince them to let him out. The inmate could be represented by a lawyer and often they are, but the lawyers not doing kind of like lawyer, trial lawyer work but, rather, just sitting there and helping the person prep for the hearing. The lawyers that i interviewed for the book have said if a lawyer has to talk a lot during the hearing, its probably bad news because the commissioners want to hear more from the person who ising asking for parole. Other people in the room include the prosecutors, the victims of the crime if they show up, a few other people, prison personnel, and theres a lot of paperwork involved x. Then the board of commissioners decides whether theyre going to recommend release or not. Californias one of the few statements who has two tiers of parole, so even if the Board Recommends youre going to get out, you still have to wait four months, the governor decides whether theyre going to approve it or refuse it. If the governor agrees to release you, then you get out. Thats the way things work in california. So a little bit about the cases that are at the heart of my book. Some of our viewers might have heard about the manson family members. For those who havent, around 1967 a man by the name of Charlie Manson gets out of federal prison. At that point hes already a very seasoned criminal. Hes done more time inside than hes done outside for fairly Violent Crimes, and the first place he goes out in 1967 after he gets out is to San Francisco. Its shortly after the summer of love, the hate ash bury e ash bury neighborhood is riddles can crime riddled with crime, lots of charismatic guys with guitars looking for followers, and he starts gathering a flock, mostly young women, teenagers. They tart following him. They get a bus, they travel up and down the coast of california, and finally they find a movie ranch in Southern California where they settle down in l. A. , and they sort of hobnob a little bit with the counterculture, the music culture in l. A. Mansons trying to break into the music scene unsuccessfully. And then in 1969 a group of mansons followers commits four very, very heinous murders which initially are not connected to each other, and its only later that the Police Connect the dots. The first is the killing of a music teacher and acquaintance of the family. Then theres the iconic, famous murder of sharon tate, at the time nine months pregnant with her child with roman plan sky and four of their friends at their mansion. The following night a married couple also living in l. A. , and then they kill donald shea who was a ranch hand at the ranch where they were living because they were afraid that he was going to tell on them. Finally, the lapd cracks the crime, they bring them to trial, and in 1971 all of the people who are on trial, Charlie Manson, the three women known as the manson girls, Patricia Krenwinkel, text watson tex watson, a few other aecoming polices are all found guilty, and they all get the Death Penalty. But theres a reversal of fortune because only a year after all these people are sentenced to death, the Death Penalty is abolished in california. So at the time, theres a case called people v. Anderson in which the court says the Death Penalty is unconstitutional, it debases california can, you know, its inhumane. They basically do away with it, and this really angers people in california. Ronald reagan, whos the governor at the time, is just outraged at the courts partly because theyre all waiting to hear a Supreme Court decision in a case some of you may have halted, berman v. Georgia, which halted the Death Penalty in the United States for four years. At the time there was some pretty serious people on death row in california. And because of this decision, 107 people that are later known as the class of 72 all have their sentences commuted from death to life with parole. Is so some of you might be wondering why didnt they just give them life without parole in that didnt exist in california until 1978. So everybody gets transferred to general prison in 1972. Theyre going to start coming up for parole in 1978. And even though this sounds really, really hard to imagine now with the very, very long sentences that we have, it was not outlandish at the time for somebody to be serving 10, 15 years for firstdegree murder and then getting out. So there was a lot of outrage in california, people are very worried that this crime becomes this kind of symbolic thing, you know, there could be nothing more evil than this, and we have to make sure this doesnt happen again. And partly why this happens is because theres a series of books, chief among those is helterskelter, the book written by the prosecutor in the case, vincent bugliosi, that are talking about this crime as being a product of this very demonic cult. And the story is that manson had told his followers that there was going to be a race war, black people and white people were going to fight each other, blood was going to flow down the streets, and once the black people win, theyre going to look for a leader, and then manson and his followers will come out of hiding, and they will rule the world. So thats the story of what the story becomes, and everybody sort of buys into the idea that this is a crime that is very, very unique in its evil. One of the things that i cover in the book is even though this story is factually true, its a truth that hides other truths because there are two other stories you can tell about this crime. Theres also a way to look at these crimes as not being so outlandish and being the crime of common criminals, and there are some accounts including accounts from the victims and from the offenders and from journalists that suggest what actually happened was a drug deal gone bad, they tried to make amends with the panthers who they really feared. Manson was very aggrade grade afraid of the panthers. One of the Family Associates got arrested for the gary inman murder. They recreated the other crimes to be copycat crimes to sort of throw the lapd off the scent and show them theyd been on the wrong track. Unsuccessfully, obviously. Another thing is the issue of the cult. And the requested the idea is these people were hopped out of their minds on drugs, the women were regularly sexually exploited, manson himself was a very violent man, and a lot of this factors into the way we view the crimes. Now, this is crucially important because the account in helterskelter is a story that he crafted to great extent for legal purposes. You see, under California Law at the time you couldnt convict a murderer, somebody that that had not been on the murder scene itself without tying [inaudible] he needed that story to tie manson to the crime. Manson himself was not at the crime scene. But the story of the cult starts percolating after the convictions become real. Now, one of the things that some of you might think about is that just last year a new tarantino movie came out basically telling the story of what happened with the murders, and one of the reasons i really like the tarantino movie is because it tells a complicated story. Basically tells you all three stories at once, so the helterskelter story, the common criminal story, you get a little flavor of everything, some will recognize this little scene from the movie, and you can see that theres something very wrong going on there. This is the brad pitt character coming in to the ranch to see whats going on. Theres something very wrong and sinister going on, but you can see the squalor, the exploitation, so its all there. And just to kind of lend more credibility to the cult story, manson was not the only person who was violent and scary and exploitive at the time. This guy in the picture was widely known as one of the granddaddies here of cults in california, very, very scary man just as well. Very active in california at the time. And, in fact, in the early 70s [inaudible] cults start amassing so that in 1974, the first africanamerican legislator in california actually holds legislative hearings, and people who are in cults come to the hearings, fathers and mothers of people in cults come in and say please save our kids, and he says theres nothing i can do. A lot of these people are adults, theres freedom of speech. A lot of people who speak up are mentioning the manson murders and saying, look, if we knew now now meaning in 1974 what we knew about cults, we probably wouldnt have sentenced the girls to death, theyre probably victims. Looking at this whole thing through a me too lens and how we would perceive the murders at this point. But the train of what to do with the manson family has already left the station. In 19 is 76 not only [audio difficulty] come back bigtime for the United States, but also california introduces something called the terminus sentencing act which is they change the way they give punishment to serious crimes, and in 1978 california brings back the Death Penalty, crypts life without parole, and they say were doing this because we want to make sure the next time a Charlie Manson comes in, we can punish them appropriately. Theres a lot of fear about this case repeating itself. Manson and the disciples are often mentioned in these, in these legislative hearings. So heres jerry brown today, heres jerry brown as he was when he was young and golf of california in the 70s. He gets letters from the aclu, from the legislative Analysts Office from the l. A. Police union saying please dont pull the sentences up. Every time a crazy crimes going to come up, you know, punishments going to skyrocket, and jerry browns not attentive to that. He listens to this helterskelter argument, ratchets up the platform for punishment, and this is how we get these increasingly severe sentences in california ever since. In 1988 theres an extra layer to this which is thats when we add the governors veto. Before that the governor couldnt veto the decisions. Now the governor has this political yea or nay after the board makes its decision. And on top of everything, the commissioners are political appointees by the governor. So youre looking at a page from the California Department of corrections web site, and as you can see the [inaudible] you can see everybody, you can see its a pretty Diverse Group in terms of gender, in terms of race, but they are not at all diverse in terms of their backgrounds. Every Single Person that you see here comes from either a corrections background or former sheriffs or former police chiefs. So not a Single Person who is a therapeutic professional, not a single psychologist or social worker, nobody who knows anything about substance abuse, about mental illness, about a lot of the things that happen in prison. It is only much, much, much later, just in the recent two or three years, that they start appointing people from defense backgrounds but still nobody with a professional therapeutic background is on this board. And then finally, we have, we have this extra, extra layer on top of everything. This is 2008 when california adopts a Voter Initiative called marys law marcys law, and victims can bring a lot of people to support, victim advocates, the victim advocates can bring their own advocates, so a big posse coming in to support the victims of the hearing. But more importantly, they increase the time between parole denials. Now when youre denied for only, the presumptive time you have to wait is 15 years. Because this is so much, theres often exceptions, but this is supposed to be the rule. This gives you kind of an idea of what the law is like. So what i want to do now is talk a little bit of whats actually happening in this year. What youre seeing in this picture is Patricia Krenwinkel whos now the old female [inaudible] with her attorney, theyre facing the commissioners, talking about her case. Heath wattly runs a nonprofit in california which represents people on parole, and he holds these trainings for lawyers that want to represent people on parole. And when you come to the trainings, the first thing he tells you is, look, forget about this being a criminal trial. Youre already guilty. Any effort to present your own version of events is going to fail. As you can imagine, this is a a massive problem for the people who are in prison, and we know there are people in prison with very long terms for things they havent actually done. They are innocent. But if you say i didnt do it, you havent expressed insight. Insight is kind of, the best way to explain what insight is, its whatever the board wants it to be, right . Insight is sort of a combination of remorse and of looking at yourself back at the time of the crime and sort of explaining why you committed the crime. I once was blind but now i see, but im changed. So its supposed to reflect this sort of internal transformation to Something Else youve gone through in prison. So the first and most important way to show this is to basically agree with anything thats in the court record. In the mid 80s when i looked at the transcripts, i saw the commissioners were general lin winly interest genuinely interested in what people had so to saw. Susan atkins has said she did not ask did not stab anyone. She says tex watson did the stabbing, he himself confirmed. Tell your side of the story. After of the mid 80s, any effort that you make to tell a story thats different from what the court believes, youre trying to minimize, youre not showing insight. To thats really key. And the problem with insight, one of the interesting things about using insight is that insight is whatever they want. So if there are Strong Political reasons for not letting you out, they can always say this person doesnt have insight. Now, this is really important because in the last 20 years the [inaudible] in hearings is you cant deny somebody parole just based on the heinousness of the crime. But they can always say youre not showing insight about your heinous crime, and then they dont let you out. Now, theres another interesting thing to point out and thats that the prosecutor present at all the hearings. The guy that you see here is one of the original prosecutors in the manson family trial. He used to come into every single hearing and programmed pioneered a program in the 80s. Initially the role of the prosecutor was to explain things from the trial report. But stephen kay and the people who came after him actually expanded this role, and now the prosecutor is something that i call the moral memory of the voice. He talks about risk, he asks people questions about their behaviors in prison, hell say, so charlie, i hear youre drawing spiders on the walls of your prison, naked ladies, what should we be thinking about that. Sometimes hell point at the inmate and say you have ice in your vanes instead of veins instead of blood. So he feels very comfortable participating. Hes basically partnering with the increasing bloc of the victims at the hearings. So the woman youre seeing at the hearings is deborah tate, the last surviving member of the tate family, she still shows up for every single hearing including hearings of people who did not actually have anything to do with sharon tates murder. When she cant show up as a victim, she shows up as a victim advocate. And just the expansion of how many people can show up on behalf of victims is really strong. Just to illustrate this, in the mid 80s one person would show up to tex watsons hearings, now its 17 people. This can go on for six hours, the victims will see for themselves, there will be letters. They will comment about family members that died before they were born, so its a very expanded role for the victims. And i can talk more about why i think that this was not a great way to advocate, you know, justice for the victims or for the offenders. I can tell you that in the tate family memoir they talk extensively about how hard it is for them to do it. They dont get a lot of solace or relief. They basically ban any victim opinion that is not very punitive. So at some point in the 90s a woman who was a cousin of the labiancas struck a friendship with tex watson. They were both bornagain christians, and she showed up at the hearing to say, you know, im not actually opposing his release, ive forgiven him and what have you. After the hearing in the parking lot, she was accosted and assaulted by sharon tates mom who spat on her. They openly, essentially, say that this is true. She told her youre a piece of shit, you know, your parents are rolling in their graves and, of course, she never shows up again. The only way to be a victim in california now is to be a punitive [inaudible] so a little bit about what happens when they talk about the prisons. So in addition to talking about the crime the way it was, they talk about what the persons doing now. Theres basically e two things. They talk about the disciplinary hearings and [inaudible] which is laudatory paperwork that you get for doing rehab programs, drug programs, anger management, you know, what have you. You see Leslie Van Houten in the picture, she has a masters degree, she has a teeny, tiny disciplinary file. They will repeatedly come up with the disciplinary writeups that you have from, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago and discuss them again and again and again. Theyll talk to her about having a quarter in a jacket that she borrowed from a friend or smoke marijuana in the early 80s. Sometimes they completely mix up the facts. So, you know, completely turning things out. The factually [inaudible] repeat themselves from year after year, so very, very, very difficult. Now, when we talk about rehabilitation programs, were really hitting the nail on its head. Because the issue is the california prisons dont really have rehabilitative programs. Not anymore. The prison that has more of them is san quentin, but thats because its closer to the San Francisco bay area. Prisons that are [inaudible] they dont really that option. So the board, and this is one of the shocker things that i found out, is that the board regularly recommends or requires, i should say, the [inaudible] yeah. Programs that dont exist. Or programs that you cant even attend. So you would get dinged, for example, for not attending programs when youre in solitary confinement for your own protection. Bobby is a good example here. So he was, became basically almost immediately an enemy of the aryan brotherhood, a white guy who doesnt want to bond with White Supremacists in prison, so he became their greatest enemy was basically in solitary for protection. Nonetheless, he gets dinged for not attending a program because he couldnt attend. Now, the one type of programming that they do sort of very strongly require everybody to do is drug programming, 12 steps. And thats because 12 steps is cheap. 12 steps is available because they dont need professionals for that, people do it for themselves, so they require it of everyone. And whenever somebody comes up with a slightly different type of rehabilitative program, theyre very suspicious. Tex watson, for example, starts a prison ministry, theyre constantly suspicious of his efforts. Theyre saying, well, you know, youre just doing this because you want to continue manipulating people. They do the same thing to this man who is actually a doctor of divinity. He became a born again christian fairly early on in prison, very, very strong believer, and theyll be telling him at the hearing, oh, youre still a cult follower. Youve substituted manson for jesus. Now, you can imagine for him this is inkid by offensive incredibly offensive, so he starts arguing with them x. Hes only recommended for release in 2012, but the governor reverses every time. Now, bobby comes into prison as already an accomplished artist and musician, and they require that he and all kinds of vocational programs, he keeps theming them telling them i already have a profession. Im putting together rehabilitative programs for other people, right . Because i dont really need a ged, and they ding him for being air gant. So this can give you a sense of how difficult it is to satisfy these constantly moving goalposts. The only one that doesnt really play the game is manson himself because he knows, as opposed to everybody else, that theyre never letting him out. Hes laughing and cursing at them and, you know, jumping on the table and doing whatever he wants. And in the last three hearings, he doesnt even bother to show up. And they are so flummoxed by the fact that hes not there that they talk to the empty table as if hes sitting there. So youll be reading the record, and itll stay, mr. Manson, we are speaking to you through the record. They run the whole hearing as if hes there just to show you that you continue to manipulate people even if not this and well into his death a couple years ago. So a little bit about the future. So i can talk more about letters of support, letters of opposition, maybe we can do that in the q a, but whats most important to talk about now is this picture. The woman in the picture is susan at kins, and youre seeing her 2009 hearing. At that point she was 60, she had an inoperable brain tumor, shes nonresponsive, she cant hear them, see them, she sleeps for her hearing, and shes represented by the guy on the left, James Whitehouse, her husband whos also an attorney who represented her at the hearings. And what happens at this hearing which chapter six of my book gives you a blow by blow is really, really heartbreaking, because theyre just completely ignoring the fact that this woman is lying there on a gurney. Theyre saying the reading from the text, ooh, the ada is telling us that you need a hearing aid. And James Whitehouse says she cant hear you anyway. Looking at the record and saying, well, you know, five years ago she was low risk, he wasnt super low risk, and hes like, whats she going to do . Hes going to die in a few months. Do you have enough money, yeah, im going to take care of her x then they mock him. I wish i had money to take care of my relatives, right . And on top of everything, deborah tate points at her and says shes still a danger to society because there are still people that look up to the manson family. And then they write e a decision where they dont let this woman out of prison to live the last few months of her life with her husband. Completely clean dismy mare their disciplinary records for 20 years, the only thing she got dinged for in previous hearings was she was too zealous in advocating ministering for jesus at the prison, well, to a literally captive audience at the prison. Shes old. Shes dying, right . Theyre like, no, shes still a risk. And she dies alone in prison a few months later. And i think this brings us to the question what are we going to do about this. So this, this is susan atkins again in one of the few moments of the hearing where she looks at her husband. , we can talk more about this yeah, we can talk more about this really, really hard stuff. This is a piece of art by bobby called [inaudible] and bari tow is sort of this notion of sort of a purgatorylike set of worlds or passages between when you die and when you either reach nirvana or youre reborn. And for me, this is a huge metaphor. How do we get out of this purgatory . This is a really poignant question given what were seeing now with prisoner releases facing this really Dangerous Health crisis. And in the book i make a few recommendations, and ill end with those. I recommend removing the governor veto from the process. Its an extra political layer that we dont actually need. I recommend diversifying the board so its not just political appointments, its professional appointments, people who come from they were backgrounds, people who get extensive continuing education in substance abuse, mental health, all the things that you need to know when youre dealing with populations behind bars. I recommend that you introduce really bigtime Restorative Justice processes where the victims and the offenders talk to each other where offenders can actually offer apologies that are genuine because theyre not happening on that to hanging on that to ask for their release, and theyre not jamming the process for everybody else. I recommend well, i guess the main recommendation in the book, i have a few more, but the most important one is we absolutely have to have robust rehabilitation programming in prison. Because we cant actually blame people for not having skills that the prison is not providing them. And it is a. [audio difficulty] Vocational Training that gives people jobs that they can actually do on the outside and create a continuum between what happens in prison and what happens outside of prison that will be able to really give people a chance and a hope to get release. And thats the only path that we have to get the hell out of [inaudible] thank you. And im happy to answer questions. That was amazing. And so fascinating and educational. I, man, so many emotions. [laughter] just to get everyone started, we are answering questions. You can type them in the chat as youre watching the video on youtube, and well filter them and read them out, and then well answer them on the video. I would love to this is one thing that i found very interesting. You mentioned about wanting to talk about it more with the tate family. So i first learned about this, these victims or family members of the victims coming to parole hearings from a podcast that i enjoy, and they were talking about this sort of assault on the parole hearings and how that heavily affects the results. But also you talked about how its not really healthy for the tate family to keep bringing this up. And, you know, never its like a wound that they just keep picking the scab at. And i wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that process and how did that negatively affect the sort of false hope that prisoners are given with parole. Sure. So i want to be very cautious here. I dont want to speak paternal listically about what other people need, because everybody comes into these situations with different feelings. So to the extent that im talking about things that im noticing that are, you know, creating more suffering, im actually quoting the tate family themselves from their own memoir talking about how hards it is for them to come to these hearings and how theyre not really getting anything out of it, theyre not getting the apology. The structure of this hearing is such is that it is so artificial that its the last place you would go to get any sort of reckoning, dialogue or apology. So if youre going in there and youre, like, i want to hear the person tell me im so sorry e for what i did to you, the prisoners under California Law are actually forbidden from speaking to the victims. Very often the victims dont know about this, so the victims will go outside, theyll give a tv interview, and theyll say she never told me she was sorry. Theyre not allowed to. And moreover, even if they were, would you really believe somebody who told you that theyre sorry on the hearing that theyre trying to get out . And i should say, look, everybody processes these things, you know, grief and sadness and, you know, personally im actually not a stranger to grieving over loved ones who died a violet death. I violent death, i lost to friend to a homicide, i lost nine friends to a suicide bombing in 2002. This is a very, very hard process. I work with two Violence Coalition programs, and every time i go there, i speak to dozens of families who dont see things the way the tate family does. Most of the victims of Violent Crime in california are poor people of color, and most of the time somebodys mom will come up to me and say my kid got shot by another kid over a drug deal. I dont care about the Death Penalty, i dont care about parole, i want for more kids not to die, i want more education in my neighborhood. These are not the people that have the wherewithal and the money, lets be honest, to travel to distant prisons to make victim statements. So we get a very lop sighed picture of what lopsided picture of what victims actually want. Some of you might have heard about this horrific killing of a guy by the name of bot health care am [inaudible] shot by an offduty police officer, this woman who breaks in her house claiming she thinks its her house and shooting him. A crime that obviously has us all outraged and talking about it. And then she comes to getting convicted and sentenced, and his brother, rand, who is also a devout christian, gives her this big hug and says i forgive you x. Twitter and npr goes aflame, you know . White people have been forgiven by, you know, black and benefited from black peoples forgiveness long enough. Im like, what is it . Now we, the woke, are going to tell somebody how to grieve their brother . Hes doing what is good for him. These are just as racist as the racism that theyre proclaiming to condemn. So the particular strand of [inaudible] is to want to kill people and want them to never get out, if thats the only acceptable way to be a victim, that is erasing the voices of the majority of victims in the United States who are actually not like that. So whenever we hear somebodys speaking for the victim, whos getting the microphone and why. No, thats a really interesting way of looking at it. Im curious a little bit about your writing process, if we can talk about that just for you know, i you have to craft this story over 50 years, and you have such extensive research. Where where did you start with your research, and how did this subject first come to you, and why this lens . So i think for many of us the manson families have haunted my dreams for decades. I, when the manson murders happened, i wasnt even born yet, but i remember as a little kid going to a wax museum that had a recreation and having this kind of haunt my memory for decades. Wow. And speaking about this crime and being the quintessential crime in california, and its only when i came to california as a criminal justice professional and started learning more about it i realized what a stronghold this story has on the way we view extreme crime and extreme punishments. Now, we tend to cling to these stories of horrific crimes because they are so horrible, but we also have to keep in mind theyre extremely rare. Crime rates have been falling steadily since the 80s x part of the reason were shocked about these murders is not only that theyre terrifying, but also theyre not that common. When Something Like that happens, were shaken by it, but were shaken out of proportion, and this is why california now has such a whroapted prison bloated prison population, and this is why were asking ourselves why do we have all these 60 and 65yearold people in prison. Its because we now treat everybody like Charlie Manson. Were afraid to let people out even though just in terms of looking at Public Safety and risk, they dont pose any risk. These are folks who would have committed 20, 30, 40 years ago. Everything we know about criminology tells us people age out of crime, you know, so what are we really doing here . Were keeping people who are old, theyre not healthy because they come from impoverished backgrounds, they didnt come in healthy, theyve abused substances, california prisons are so terrible that, you know, before the Big Court Rulings about them in 2011, a person was dying every six days out of a prison. And this is before there was a pandemic e going on. God knows how many people are dying because i can tell you we already have evidence that the numbers were seeing from prison are way lower than what they really are. So were having people that are old, that are sick, a third of the correctional business goes to treating people. A quarter of the population in california in prison is old and sick people. What are we doing, right . And the reason i started thinking about this, this was, of course, long before the pandemic because my first book was about all the reforms we introduced in the aftermath of the recession. And i noticed that every time states were shrinking their prison population which is a big deal, but theyre also gearing themselves towards nonviolent inmates. Because reform that addresses nonviolent inmates is always easier to sell to the public, right . You see the headlines now, right . Gavin newsom is releasing people in california including murderers. Murderer is somebody who was 55 and committed a murder when they were 22, right . So this is the violent inmates, right . People were convicted of a Violent Crime decades ago. And that a made me think i want to know how we treat super violent people at this time of revival of mercy towards nonviolent people. Like, why are we making those distinctionings. And i said im going to pick the least likable, the least forgivable people i can think of, and im going to see how they fared. And much to my vise surprise, im my surprise, im speaking to people in criminal justice, none of this is hidden. You can read any parole transcript that you want. Its all available to you. So this is all material thats rich. And basically what i did [audio difficulty] because every hearing is hours long, right . And i went over them three times. The first time i had a team of students working with me. This was their project for the spring, and they really got into it because its the first time they learned about parole. So each of them picked one person and followed them through all the years. Then i did the second two stages myself. One of them is i read the hearings by ear just to see how things change over the years. And then i read the whole thing the third time and i broke it into past, present and future, and that gives me an insight of how much you can ignore the presence of the future because of the past. A person could be lying in front of you, basically a vegetable, and your not seeing them. What youre seeing is the 21yearold who committed the crime 50 years ago. Thats oh, i love hearing about how your process went and how Much Research that you delved into it. Theres one question that we have here of going back to ideas of the commissioner appointees . If appointees with psychotherapeutic training may be preferable, how should they be selected given the political and contested nature of psychotherapeutic theories . I think thats an excellent question, and this digs into a point i couldnt make in the presentation, but it is discussed in the book which is how do we even assess risk. Do we even trust psychologists with assessing risk. The short answer to this question is we cant really trust basically anything that involves the idea that anyone assumptionively can kind of look at you. I will say that the people who have the most trust in their own ability to tell people who lie from people who tell the truth are cops and sheriffs. Cops always report, oh, i can totally tell, you know, this person is lying or not. And when theyre presented with video of true and false narratives, theyre the ones that get things the most. Theyre actually worse at doing that than general population. Id just like to tell you a little story about this. I went to a party shortly before i finished the book, and there was a guy who works for the California Department of corrections there. And there was also a journalist who had been himself incarcerated in san quentin himself for 30 years. And im talking to them about the book. Expect guy from the California Department of corrections said, oh, you know, you should, like, sea the hearings. Theyre not see the hearings, theyre not just basing it on what people say, theyre basing it onion verbal language which, by the way, is hogwash. I dont know if anybodys telling the truth, and they cant either, right . And then the guy who had been at san quentin starts giggling, and im like, whats funny . He says, you know, i was in prison for 30 years, and people deceive the board all the time. Wow. If anything, its not so much that psychologists or social workers would know, but they would perhaps have more humility and more knowledge to know what they dont know. And they would also know something that many of us in the field know, and thats that rehabilitation is as rehabilitation does. The job of the parole board is not to let people out who are good or virtuous. Theres plenty of not good, not virtuous people out there. The job of the parole board is to protect Public Safety. If a person is not inside transformed, im thinking about shawshank redemption, you know, redd comes up before the board, yeah, im completely rehabilitated. It doesnt matter if this is through or not. If the persons not going to commit crime, thats fine. Does the person have a profession . An education . A supportive structure outside, family are, friends, you know, peers, somebody to help them get a job . Theyre not going to commit crime. Is the person in their 50s . Theyre not going to commit crime. So youve got to think about that stuff, and i expect professionals would be able to do that better. Now, its true that the way they came to view psychology at these hearings has changed. Initially in the 70s and 80s there would be a prison counselor talking to you, writing a report for your file. Increasingly, we are relying more and more on these kind of, like, actuarial stuff, like they pluck a bunch of stuff into a software that spits out high risk, low risk. Yeah. The problem is that the board just picks whichever one they want. After 20 years, you have dozens of these in your file, and if they want to let you out, theres one from seven years ago that says you were medium risk, theyre going to pick that one. Now, in the case just where people have appealed this and said, hey, what are you doing . The court does ding the board for that, but how many people can awe ford to go to court . Wow. Yeah. Im, im a theater and english major. Like, my world subsists of fiction, and ive been able to, during these author events, been able to read so much beyond what i normally would, and its so fascinating to learn about. Im curious what you would hope you, obviously, have a lot to say on the subject. You wrote a whole book on it, obviously. But if there was one thing you wanted a reader to take away, what do you think that would be . So im speaking to people who might be reading this book now while the Global Pandemic is going on, and thats, you know, a really Important Message for me to send out. We are now facing a situation where our prisons have basically become incubators for this disease. All of the efforts that youre putting in to staying home and Wearing Masks and doing all the good stuff that good boys and girls do because weve been told to do it is going to be worth nothing if theres no effort to curb these diseases inside prisons. Because while the prisoners stay inside, the guards are going in and out. Youre basically creating petrie dishes all around the nation where this disease is festering and killing people. Now, this is not just about, you know, our safety. Of course the question of kind of like whats in it for me is an important one. But i will point out that people behind bars are human beings too, and even if theyre doing time for a crime, they did not sign up to die from a horrible disease because theyre being held behind bars. I want people to consider the fact that the susan atkins story is not a standalone, that routinely there are people who are old and sick and should be getting out on medical leave and should be getting out on geriatric leave. Im talking about hundreds of thousands of people throughout the United States who are going to die. Were going to see mass greys in these graves in these prisons unless state governors and anybody who has the ability to release people actually gets up and act. If this is the way things operate during a pandemic, you can only imagine how its been operating without a pandemic. Thirteen people have been executed on death row and more than 100 dying behind bars. People die behind bars for life without parole, with parole, these people are not actually endangering Public Safety, and we really need to is ask ourselves in this very punitive, you know, canceling culture where were like, no, you did a horrible thing, you can never be forgiven forever and ever and ever. When does it all end . What does it do to them . And what does it do to us that were unable to actually look at the person were seeing now, and all we can see is the person from decades ago . How this lack of compassion is shaping things now is something we can see, and i think were going to be paying a very dear price for that in the coming years. And i think the susan atkins story is very instructive as to how we can sort of have this tunnel vision of looking at crime and punishment in this very abstract way without actually looking into the eyes of people who are old and sick and need protection from the disease that the prison is not able to provide them. So if this is the one takeaway from this, i hope this is what you take away from this book. Well, i recommend that everybody reads this book because youre going to take away more than just one thing. I know we were talking before about this sort of not sort of, the terrible timing of the pandemic. But what i find this book gave me such a unique perspective on it and thinking outside of just my personal bubble of people that i care about or interact with. And its a really eyeopening look, and its one of the things that connects us most as humans, empathy. So thank you for what youve given us in this unexpected way. Its not only a fascinating book, but its also a really great study into the human condition, and i just thank you so much. I hope that all of you that are watching go and pick up a copy. We have Copies Available at tatteredcover. Com, and you can order them online and get a copy of yesterdays monsters, which now that im thinking about the title, well done. [laughter] is there anything youd like to say before we sign off . You know, people have asked me in the very few appearances i was able to do before the pandemic hit, people were asking why didnt you pick some poor, sympathetic person. Whyd you have to pick the manson family to sell this story. And what i say is i mean, theres many reasons why this is a good case study, but the story i have to tell is so compelling, and the way this process works if you find a place in the ember of your heart to connect with the manson family, try to connect to the rest of the family of man. I love that. I think thats a perfect note to end on. Once again, check out yesterdays monsters. You can purchase it at tatteredcover. Com, and check out the rest of the events that we have, and im sure hadar has more you can check out if you want to learn more about this subject as well as read it in the book. That took a lot of time and effort. Hadar, if you stay on for just a note, were going just a moment. Were going to sign off here. Stay safe, everybody, wash your hands, all that jazz. Until next time, thanks, everyone. A look now at some Publishing Industry news. Donald trump jr. Has announced he will release a book next month thats critical of Presumptive Democratic president ial nominee joe biden. The selfpublished book titled liberal privilege will be available at the end of august to coincide with the Republican National convention. Andrew weissman, former president for special counsel robert mueller, plans to publish his account into the twoyear investigation, the book where law ends will be for sale on september 29th. In other news, Publishers Weekly reports on how authors are getting creative with the release of new books during the pandemic. Firsttime novelist Melanie Conroy goldman has invited readers to attend an outdoor driving event while thriller author daniel silva is working with several independent bookstores to live stream his book launch. Also according to npd book sales, print book sales are up almost 3 for the first half of the year. The rise in sales is led by young adult nonfiction books while adult nonfiction sales are down by about 35 for the year 3. 5 for the year. And due to ongoing concerns due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 71st National Book awards will take place online on november 18th. Booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. You can also watch all of our archived programs anytime at booktv. Org. Binge watch booktv this summer. Every saturday evening at 8 p. M. Eastern, settle in and watch several hours of your favorite authors. Tonight were featuring New York Times breast selling author and journal best selling author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell author of several books including the tipping point, outliers and david and goliath. And be sure to watch next saturday, july 25th. Well feature books by prime ministers donald trump president s donald trump, barack obama, george w. Bush, bill clinton and george h. W. Bush. Binge watch booktv all summer on cspa