Dear Dirty America

Release the rapist!

What a generous society we live in! How upstanding we are, when we keep someone like Jimmy the Pot Dealer in prison for decades, but we let go a man named Christopher Hubbart, who admitted to raping and assaulting dozens of women in the 70s and 80s. Hey, why not let him go?

Hubbart is ready to live in a single-family home in the unincorporated area of east Palmdale. It’s always nice to get a little fresh blood into the neighborhood. Let the taxpayer set him up in his own home, where he will have a semi-fast Internet connection and access to an impressive array of pornographic material with which authorities hope will keep him sated and off the dusty streets at night.

There really is nothing to fear. First of all, a judge in Northern California banished Hubbart to the middle of fucking nowhere. But not too much in the middle of fucking nowhere:

Tracey said the home was at least three miles from any school or park, in compliance with state laws on sex offenders.

“From a public safety perspective it’s a good location,” she said after Friday’s hearing, adding that the company contracted to house Hubbart had a good track record. “I’m confident they can keep people in the community safe.” (source)

He’ll be monitored by an ankle bracelet for 30 days. What could go wrong after that? The authorities have thought of everything before releasing a rapist back into the public.

I’ve always wanted to live on the edge of the desert, away from populated areas. Cut my connections with everybody. Live in solitude like a thirsty Henry David Thoreau. But not when I have to say hello to society’s most unwanted people, like Christopher Evans Hubbart. He’d probably want to get coffee, and then I’d have to oblige him so as to appear open-minded and liberal.

So you raped a lot of women, huh? I’d ask, looking into my cup. That’s cool. I’m still finding myself, too. It’s a journey, this whole life thing!

I’m trying to raise a garden like Candide, I’d probably tell him, just to keep making conversation. Peas. Carrots. String beans. But they keep getting fried by the disastrous desert heat. That sun is like a laser beam! Why do we live out here, in the sand!

“Where else can I live?” he might ask. “I’ve been cast aside, to the barren earth, me and any of my offspring to be trodden by God forever and ever.”

It’s a terrible thing to have to release a rapist back into gentle, naive society. Some people no doubt wish we’d dump sex offenders onto Dick Cheney’s sprawling Jackson Hole property and let him hunt them down with his shotgun and binoculars. But that’s cruel and unusual.

What should society do with these people? We certainly can’t keep them locked up for too long. Only nonviolent offenders make good inmates in our Goldman-Sachs funded prisons. Passive prisoners make better low wage workers, and that’s good for business. The fewer hardcore rapists and murderers locked up, the better for the investors. The fewer fruitcakes, the higher production rises.

[desert town, Californa, by Stan Shebs]