Charles Manson

Charles Manson is an individual that will be serving the rest of his life in California State Prisons. He is an American cult leader who convinced his followers to carry out several murders in the late 1960’s. He was able to manipulate and convince others to commit the murders thinking he could not be charged with them because his hands were free of committing crimes. What theories of criminal behavior would cause an individual such as him to do things of this nature?

Charles Manson was born back in 1934 in Ohio, to a sixteen year old girl who was also an alcoholic and prostitute. Charles Manson’s mother did marry his father however it was a marriage that quickly ended and Manson was sent to a boy’s school when he was 12. Pretty soon however Manson found himself homeless and committing petty crimes to get by. Family members from Manson’s childhood recall that he was a sociopath with above average social skills, based on life course theory he was a criminal in the making. They claim he lied about everything as a child, he never held himself accountable for any of his actions. Due to his mother being an alcoholic and prostitute they were always very low income and living in poverty.

Manson had no real interest in education; over the next nine years he began to graduate from petty crimes to transporting stolen cars across state lines which is how he received his first prison sentence. He quickly began to go in and out of being incarcerated being charged with different crimes. In his probation and parole reports it noted that he suffered from a marked degree of rejection, instability, and psychic trauma. They also put that he was a dangerous, unpredictable man, and only safe under supervision. He was always striving for status and some type of love from someone which could be caused by Plato’s theory of love, due to his childhood and the lack of love he received from either parent. During one of his releases from prison he became a pimp, where he would find...