Regis Lepage is an ex-baker with a load of bread. This is not why he was spared jail time for possession and distribution of child pornography, despite the howls of critics.

Time behind bars, while satisfactory for the moral outrage stemming from Lepage’s horrible deeds, would have neither served justice, nor the community. Letting him work and live around Lewiston-Auburn, forever marked by his conviction, is a strong and suitable punishment for his crimes.

Lepage is guilty of perversion. For reasons deep within his psyche, viewing children engaged in sexual activity is appealing to him, despite society’s rejection of child pornography as revolting, as well as myriad laws prohibiting its possession and dissemination.

He is a sick man. Thankfully, he only indulged his twisted fetish by proxy – digital images and videos – instead of with local children. Instead, he victimized unknown youngsters as a shameful voyeur. “For those children, I am deeply sorry for what I have done,” he said during his sentencing.

Justice Donald Marden suspended Lepage’s eight-year prison sentence, in return for a severe list of conditions: 10 years of sex offender registration, treatment as a sex offender, prohibition from access to computer, the Internet, or any form of pornography, and 4,000 hours of community service.

Lepage will spend the equivalent of more than 500 eight-hour days helping rebuild the Charity Food Pantry in downtown Lewiston, the wealthy former drag racer and bakery executive toiling to help the less fortunate, one hammer swing and paintbrush stroke at a time.

He will contribute definitively to society, rather than paying his debt to it by sitting inside a taxpayer-funded prison cell for the next three to five years. The ranks of our correctional system are already swelled, especially because of inmates with mental illnesses long left untreated.

Lepage, unlike so many others, can afford his own, court-ordered, mental health services, like his current counseling in Portland. He can relieve a crowded system from feeding one undeserving mouth, because the right place for him is treatment by qualified professionals, not incarceration.

The anger over his perceived lack of punishment comes because judges are expected to exact the most draconian penalties against offenders guilty of morally outrageous crimes. And exploiters of children are the foundation on which the totem pole of evildoers is built. There’s nobody lower.

Yet sentencing guidelines allow judicial discretion in their cases, because prison isn’t always the best option for offenders. It isn’t for Lepage, as for him, freedom is an equally punitive experience.

He is a pariah. For the rest of his life, he will be known as a possessor of child pornography. A deviant with a high-profile name and reputation in this community that will forever ensure his conviction is never forgotten.

When Justice Marden says Lepage “created his own prison,” he was right.