I find this attitude dismaying because to me it just screams out "I AM SCARED!!!" You are suggesting that society place a permanent mark on this young man's criminal record and force him into course of treatment designed to change who he is because one sentence he wrote puts him in the category of "different than you ever were." You know nothing about this person except that he is in jail for one sentence which was a joke; this is not right even if you feel the joke was in poor taste. If you think that a person's making one joke you don't like is enough information about that person to prescribe such dire consequences then you should seriously reevaluate the way you think about the world around you. Supposing a heckler had shouted to George Carlin that he was insane in the middle of a performance, and he responded the same way this young man did -- would you be calling for the same consequences as you are for the young man in the article? A disproportionate reaction to something like this is the grown-up equivalent of being frightened of monsters under your bed at night, and nobody deserves to have his or her life ruined because of it.