Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s recent statement opposing the placement of Christopher Hubbart—a designated Sexually Violent Predator (SVP)—in the Antelope Valley community of Juniper Hills is politically charged, emotionally satisfying, and ultimately unproductive. It feeds a dangerous cycle: we decry the release of people like Hubbart, then refuse to address the system that created the problem, leaving marginalized, rural communities caught in the crosshairs.
Let’s be clear: no one is defending Hubbart’s crimes. His record is horrifying—scores of assaults, multiple convictions, and decades in custody. But the uncomfortable truth is this: after 20 years of psychiatric hospitalization, the state deemed him no longer an imminent threat under the law’s strict standards. California’s system, for better or worse, provides no legal option for indefinite detention once those criteria are met. The courts followed the law.
Hochman isn’t offering a solution. He’s not proposing reforms to the SVP process, new treatment protocols, or concrete placement alternatives. He’s simply objecting to where Hubbart might be placed. That’s not leadership—that’s scapegoating.
The system requires Hubbart to be placed somewhere. Los Angeles County has consistently refused to create feasible placement options for SVPs. Urban, suburban, or rural—every proposal is met with the same NIMBY outrage, protests, and lawsuits. The result? Courts look to sparsely populated, politically powerless areas like Juniper Hills because nowhere else will have them.
Hochman frames this as “dumping” predators in the high desert. But that’s a convenient way to avoid facing the real problem: California’s SVP system is broken, and elected officials, including Hochman, are more interested in scoring political points than fixing it. By fanning the flames of outrage, he leaves rural LA County residents with no recourse but rage—while offering nothing in the way of long-term reform.
The monitoring difficulty argument is a common refrain but misleading. Liberty Healthcare, the state-contracted agency overseeing SVPs, uses 24/7 GPS tracking, unannounced visits, and strict curfews. Recidivism among SVPs under this system is vanishingly rare. Meanwhile, thousands of people convicted of serious sex crimes finish parole every year with far less oversight—often moving back to dense urban neighborhoods without fanfare. No one issues press releases then.
The public deserves honesty: no placement feels good. But if the DA’s office truly cares about public safety, the answer isn’t dumping blame on the desert. It’s demanding that Los Angeles County develop fair, distributed, and accountable placement policies. It’s investing in long-term reforms—rethinking SVP designations, improving treatment models, and confronting the legal fiction that “civil commitment” is therapeutic rather than punitive exile.
Instead, Hochman’s grandstanding ignores critical facts. Sexual violence is a systemic social problem, but reflexively relying on excessive punishments—decades of imprisonment followed by indefinite commitment—neither prevents future harm nor addresses root causes. Research tells us this approach wastes resources that could be directed toward prevention, treatment, and restorative justice.
In 2024, The Sentencing Project released a groundbreaking report, “Responding to Crimes of a Sexual Nature: What We Really Want Is No More Victims.” The findings challenge common myths driving public fear and punitive policy. Sexual recidivism rates range from 5% after three years to 24% after 15 years—lower than most other violent crimes. Recidivism rates for sexual offenses in the U.S. have actually declined by 45% since the 1970s. When reoffending happens, it’s often with non-sexual crimes.
The report also highlights that most sexual offenses occur between people who know each other—stranger attacks like Hubbart’s are the exception, not the rule. And many individuals convicted of sexual offenses have severe trauma histories of their own, including physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. While that doesn’t excuse the harm caused, it complicates the narrative that these individuals are monstrous and beyond rehabilitation.
Moreover, like so much of the criminal legal system, racial disparities plague the prosecution and punishment of sexual offenses. While 70% of people arrested for rape and other sex offenses in 2020 were white, people of color were sentenced to prison at two to three times the rate of white individuals.
Our current system doesn’t prevent violence—it simply turns people into lifelong pariahs, monitored or imprisoned until they die. And it does so while draining resources that could support survivors, fund prevention programs, and reduce the actual incidence of sexual violence.
What’s missing from Hochman’s statement—and so many public conversations about SVPs—is any commitment to that bigger picture. Instead of addressing root causes or reforming the system, he’s playing a familiar political game: scapegoat the person everyone hates, dump them somewhere no one lives, and declare victory.
But that’s not justice. It’s not safety. It’s politics at the expense of the very communities Hochman claims to protect.
California created this legal purgatory. Until leaders have the courage to fix it—until we stop pretending indefinite detention is an answer—stop acting surprised when the most vulnerable communities pay the price.
If we really want no more victims, we need to start acting like it. That means investment in prevention, support for survivors, and evidence-based policies—not performative outrage every time the system does exactly what it was designed to do.
