Posessing child pornography is a crime. So yes, he did deserve jail time.

I get that it’s a crime, but you are missing the point of what I’m saying. My question is what good does throwing someone in jail for child porn do? He wouldn’t emerge in 4-7 years a magically changed man, which is why I say he needed help rather than jail time. If he wasn’t physically hurting anyone, there was no reason for him to be held in prison. Where he belonged was a mental institution because he was clearly unstable.

Furthermore, if you’d ever done any research on pedophilia from the pedophile’s perspective, then you would know that their attraction to children is absolutely not a choice and is usually a result of some sort of abuse – physical, emotional, or otherwise. Most pedophiles even feel in their mind that they are the same age as the children they find themselves attracted to. They can’t help it. That fact alone doesn’t make them evil. What sets them apart is whether or not they act on their feelings. Mark never did, and likely never planned to. I think he probably had enough self-control in that respect, but he fucked up anyway. He gave in to his feelings, and he most likely felt an insane amount of guilt and shame for it. Who wouldn’t? After all, he didn’t ask for any of this, and probably felt death was his only escape.

And for all those people saying “he was a coward!” if you were being faced with a prison sentence lasting several years, I think you’d turn into a coward too.

I’ll say it again, possessing child pornography is A CRIME. In Mark’s case (maybe in all cases, hopefully) it warranted JAIL TIME. Not only did he deserve jail time, but he also needed help in the form of therapy and rehabilitation. You most certainly seem to be excusing his actions by feeling like he didn’t deserve jail time. If you feel like pedophilia is a disorder/mental illness that’s fine, but once that “disorder/mental illness” starts harming people in the way Mark’s did. It deserves JAIL TIME in addition to but limited to, therapy and rehabilitation.

he point of imprisonment is to condition a person into behaving or thinking differently so they won’t commit crimes in the future. How would prison stop someone from having pedophilic thoughts? I’m not excusing what he did or saying it was okay, but it doesn’t make sense for a person to go to prison for that. Our legal system is full of flaws; just because the United States government says something is a crime doesn’t necessarily mean it automatically warrants jail time. For example: smoking weed isn’t really bad, yet possessing marijuana is a felony in most states. Child porn is obviously terrible and possessing it is not okay, but that doesn’t make Mark inherently evil because of it.

I made my initial post because I was heartbroken to hear the news of Mark’s passing. Despite his flaws, he was extremely talented and was an inspiration to me and lots of other people. Plus, the ones who knew him and spoke out about his death all claim that he was a loving person who would never intentionally harm anyone. It just hurt me to see so many people being so disrespectful to a person they didn’t know or understand. That is all I wanted to say on the matter, and it’s crazy that people have to be specifically told that it’s rude to celebrate someone’s death.