Should Leslie Van Houten be paroled?

No. She did the crime. She stabbed a woman 14 times. Yes she was 19 at the time, but she had the choice to make. She made the wrong choice.

Agreed with @chyna – van Houten may be a better person 50 years later, but the fact is that she played an active and eager part in the murders.

I’m all for rehabilitation but the line stops, at least for me, at premeditated murder..

I dunno, I think the real issue is does she still pose any threat to society. I would say no.
Most likely she will just live out what’s left of her life in some little apartment somewhere, hiding from the world, so, in reality, she will still be incarcerated in her own way. I don’t condone her role in the Manson family crimes but after all these decades I do not think she poses a risk, that’s really the crux of the matter IMO.

This.

https://www.fluther.com/189631/do-you-believe-leslie-van-houten-former-manson-family-member-convicted/

I don’t know enough about her mental state now. They were gruesome murders and she played an active role in them. I’d want to be very certain that she does pose no future risk before I could say I supported her parole.

I also think a life sentence should be a life sentence. I don’t agree with the death penalty, but I do want to see those who commit heinous crimes incarcerated for a long time. I can’t see a time when I’d ever want some of our most high profile murderers to be allowed out again.

@Coloma, ouch. Painful link.

I agree with Coloma. I believe our prisons should be rehabilitative, as much as possible, and I also believe this is a rare, but clear case of rehabilitation.

@Earthbound_Misfit We’re not talking about setting a legal precedent here. We’re talking about this one, individual case.

My answer stands @Espiritus_Corvus. I don’t know enough about her mental state to determine whether she would be safe to release, so I couldn’t really say whether she could or should be paroled. However, even if she’s reformed, I believe a life sentence should be a life sentence. I’m torn on the idea. I think prison should be about protecting society from vicious criminals, not imposing a cruel punishment. However, someone like this has taken someone else’s life, and brutally. I feel a life sentence was justified when she was sentence (or the death penalty was commuted), and it remains justified.

Understood. I’ve been following the Manson cases since the murders took place, and that is why I am convinced she is rehabilitated. I would also like a penal system that is more willing to take mitigating circumstances into account during parole hearings, years after the emotional impact of the case has diminished and people are thinking more clearly.

But I live in a country that houses more prisoners than anywhere else in the world—4.4% of the world’s population within a population of only 325 million. That’s 2.2 million adult prisoners alone, or 22% of all the world’s prisoners. Recidivism rates are out of this world.

Within three years of release, about two-thirds (67.8 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Within five years of release, about three-quarters (76.6 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Of those prisoners who were rearrested, more than half (56.7 percent) were arrested by the end of the first year.

We aren’t such bad citizens to warrant that, so there is something horribly wrong with our judicial and penal systems. One of those things is that we aren’t even attempting rehab anymore in most of our penal systems. The other is that we have people inside who no longer belong their. Another is that prison is the go-to solution for nearly every crime, and we actively make laws that create felons by converting socio-economic based misdemeanors into felony charges upon repetition.

So, this is probably why two good friends from across the Pacific would disagree on this.

We don’t disagree @Espiritus_Corvus. We might not agree on this one case, but our prison system is not so much better. And many of our inmates are Aboriginal people who have committed minor crimes but can’t pay their fines. I totally agree with the importance of rehabilitation systems that remove people from prison. I do however believe the efforts to rehabilitate incarcerated people fall down if we don’t follow up with adequate support services after they are released. In principle, I believe people can be rehabilitated and I agree with the need for an effective parole system.

However, Van Houten is not someone who robbed a bank or was involved in a crime of passion. She participated in a cold-blooded murder. And we can argue that she was young and perhaps under the influence of Manson, but that doesn’t really excuse the brutality of the crime she was involved in. I think she falls into a different category to most criminals. She murdered more than one person. She’s in the Myra Hindley, Ivan Milat and so on camp. There are some crimes that I believe are so heinous their perpetrators should not be released. She falls into that camp for me. Would she kill again? I don’t know.

One of the downsides of the release of violent criminals is that if they do re-offend, some other innocent person suffers. We’ve seen that so often in Australia in recent years. There have been some very high profile cases. The Jill Meagher murder. The Daniel Morecombe murder. Both murderers had been released on parole after committing earlier violent crimes. As a consequence, I think those who commit serious violent crimes, should have to serve their full sentences and for some, they should never be released.

No! She is an emotional threat to most of us who remember the heinous crimes she comitted. She is a cult figure, although a lesser one, just like Charles Manson himself. There are too many sickos and creeps out there that would take her release as a “sign from god/devil/lampost or whatever that it’s OK to committ heinous crimes, because this “goddess of the crime of the century” is walking free.

I don’t believe in the death penalty, because that makes our society culpable in murder, and I believe that some crimes, and some criminals, because of the bigger threat they pose to society (even if it’s just psychological) need to stay locked up. It’s safer for them, it’s safer for us.

No

It’s hard to say. Not knowing all that has transpired in the years she was imprisoned. I will say though, in the UK, life does not mean life.
We had a neighbour here stab an escort 58 times, he then called two more escorts to the home and raped them and tried to murder them. He has only been sent to prison for 20 years. He is 38, so still quite active when he leaves.
Two guys threw a guy into the canal in a pub fight and walked off not even looking back, as the CCTV showed they got 8 years.
There was recently a crime whereupon an attractive Oxford university student assaulted a male in a very violent way and has a history of violence was let go as the judge said ‘She had a bright future ahead of her’. (???).
The list is endless.
Here in the UK, she’d have been set free decades ago.

Plus the prisons are cushy here, I am led to believe. Your own room, TV, three meals a day, classes and study courses, gyms etc.,
Unlike South African prisons where they sleep 50 to a room on the floor.

What societal good is accomplished by keeping her in prison?

I don’t think she will spend her nights creepy crawling strangers houses, looking for pregnant movie stars she can cut the babies out of after killing everyone else.
I am worried she will try to have more of the family paroled.
I am worried she will become a celebrity, and write a book, and live well on her recounts of cult life, group sex, and tales of Charlie Manson.
I am worried she will try to pick up the pieces of her cult life, and do it again.
She is lost to society. Anyone who did what she did can never truly recover.

She got it! I wish her the best, her life is, essentially over as it is. At 68 there is no turning back the hands of time. 50 years in prison IS a life sentence and she has served it.

From what I have read, she should have been executed. Such a savage should been in a cage for her entire life at the very least. Anyone who upholds such savages is an accomplice to her vicious crimes.