The purpose of prison

If visited CNN's web site at all today, there is no doubt you saw the lengthy feature story about four members of the Manson "family." The story has been prominently displayed for about the last 24 hours.

I read it, and I hope you will, too, if you haven't done so already. It is a look at what the lives of four Manson "family" killers are like more than 30 years removed from their crimes and what their chances are for parole.

(The short answer to the latter: Infinitesimal, but not impossible.)

But the CNN story is useful for more than just the narrative, the window it provides into who this man and these women have become. Perhaps without meaning to be, it is actually a thought-provoking piece about the purpose of prison.

The story details how these for "family" members have taken responsibility for their actions, bettered themselves and renounced their ties with Charles Manson, the mastermind of the 1969 crimes that were so heinous, they became part of American pop culture.

They are described by prison officials as model inmates. One member of the "family" -- Charles "Tex" Watson -- is an ordained minister. Susan Atkins has terminal brain cancer. Her requests for a "compassionate release" have been rejected, even though she is bedridden. The other two women profiled for this story are both active in servicework through their prison.

CNN appears to inject some editorial commentary into the story here:

After three decades behind bars, Manson family members Atkins, Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten have repeatedly been described as model prisoners who have accepted responsibility for their crimes.

Parole boards, however, continue to reject their bids for release, and a debate rages over whether the four should ever be freed.

In pressing for her early release, Atkins's attorney James Whitehouse (who is also her husband) notes that even though her condition continues to deteriorate, "there is still a very real chance the Parole Board will nonetheless insist her release would be a danger to society."

And there's the hook for the philosophical debate underlying this story: Is the purpose of prison simply to keep dangerous people away from the rest of us? Is it also to rehabilitate criminals in hopes that they can be returned to society? Or is it also something else -- to provide justice, i.e., recompense, for whatever they have done?

Yes, yes ... and yes.

If the purpose of prison was simply to keep dangerous people away from society and to rehabilitate and return to society those criminals who "straightened up," then Atkins's request for early release would be a different story. In fact, her medical condition wouldn't enter in to the discussion at all. It would be irrelevant. If she had been rehabilitated, then she wouldn't be a danger to others. Her release -- and the release of the other three "family" members profiled here -- would be noncontroversial.

But protection and rehabilitation aren't in themselves the total ends of prison.

As attention turns to whether they should be paroled, it is perhaps easy to forget that they were originally sentenced to death for their crimes. They are only eligible for parole because their sentences were commuted to life in prison in 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment laws.

Let's put that another way: The jurors who spent weeks hearing, seeing and weighing the evidence of these murders believed that these crimes were serious enough that these four people should pay for them with their lives. Rehabilitation was beside the point; jurors decided that justice demanded their lives for the ones they took. They certainly never intended for them to walk in freedom again.

SIDEBAR: If you are old enough to remember the Manson Family murders in 1969, you don't need any reminder of what those killings entailed. But if you weren't around then, you can find -- and see -- all you need to know here. Be forewarned: The story and the images are graphic and disturbing -- as was what happened to the Manson "family" victims. END SIDEBAR

It was chance that the killers' death sentences were commuted. But that circumstance does not in any way lessen the debt that juries decided they owe society for their crimes.

Over the past 30-plus years, they have paid that debt the only way they can -- by mentoring other inmates, being model prisoners and contributing what they can to the outside world.

And they should continue doing those things for the rest of their lives ... right where they are. They may have reformed in prison, but the lives they took so brutally can never be restored.

Justice will not be served until they pay with their own.