LOS ANGELES — Somewhere inside the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, 26-year-old Hannah Tubbs is serving her sentence for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old child in a Denny's bathroom nearly a decade ago.
The Tubbs' case has become fodder for the conservative outrage machine, but in this instance, Tucker Carlson and his far-right gotcha groupies have a point — and I really hate saying that. Though Tubbs was 17 when the crime was committed, it requires mental contortions to see the benefit of treating her as a child now.
The absurdity of prosecuting Tubbs as a minor and the outcome of that decision — likely months in a detention facility for juveniles with little access to sex offender treatment or monitoring after release — are a subversion not just of the legal process, but of years of work that have gone into reforming our criminal justice system. Tubbs has the potential to become an object of fearmongering akin to Willie Horton, the Massachusetts felon who derailed the presidential aspirations of Michael Dukakis in 1988 after George H.W. Bush held the case up as an example of failed second-chance crime policies.
