Careful there, Jed. The story’s a bit more complicated than that.
Because Hulett was a first-time offender, Corrections Department officials told the judge that he wouldn’t receive sex-offender treatment while in prison. The judge worried that without treatment, Hulett would go on to abuse more children as soon as he was let out of jail. He set the sentence at a 60-day minimum so that Hulett could be released under stringent conditions, including a treatment requirement. The judge made some mush-headed comments about “punishment” not being important, but his basic contention that sex-offenders need therapy isn’t wrong.
Now that the state is offering Hulbett treatment in jail, one expects that the judge will reconsider the sentence.
P.S. Let me emphasize that I don’t think treatment is more important than punishment; If I heard that a child-rapist couldn’t get therapy in prison, my first instinct would be to try to make sure he never gets out, not to find a way to arrange therapy. So I’m not necessarily defending the judge’s decision so much as saying it’s not quite as insane as it sounds at first blush, and that the facts of the case suggest that things will work themselves out.