Disclaimer: Still don't own Potter. Damn!
Azkaban was punishment but Kingsley sometimes wondered if it was too much. Azkaban was where people died, people were broken and people became bitter. The most dangerous people were sent there but what happened to them was unspeakable. It wasn't as if they didn't deserve it. They did as far as he was concerned but now the war was over and he had seen the effect the prison had on its inmates he wondered if the crime was worth the punishment. After all they had been known to frame the wrong person sometimes; Sirius Black had been a prime example of this. Maybe one of the most notorious men in the wizarding world once he was now dead due to his stay there. People said he was sane but in fact Kingsley knew that Sirius had never fully recovered both physically and mentally. His cousin was another person who had been broken by the place. True, Bellatrix Lestrange had been mad before her sentence but the stay had made her want revenge and she sought it with a passion never witnessed before by the human kind. Locking the death eaters away had probably not been a good idea; it had incensed them and driven them even further into the darkness. Kingsley had only had the misfortune of going to Azkaban once and he had been disgusted. The whole place reeked of death and pain. That had been the idea, Fudge had said but Kingsley wondered if it had gone a bit too far. If you were insane you wouldn't even realise you were being punished. It would have been better to have let them live in at least healthy conditions rather than the positively primeval ones they were forced to endure. It wasn't meant to be a holiday and he accepted that but couldn't they at least have proper baths and showers. They were still people. Sort of.
So as act one of his new rules as Minister of Magic he changed Azkaban forever. Inmates were treated with some respect, allowed to maintain their dignity. The dementors were banished forever and relatives were allowed to visit. Azkaban still broke wizards and witches sometimes but at least it wasn't lying anymore about what it was. It would never again produce a demon like Bellatrix or a broken innocent man like Sirius Black. That was all that mattered now Kingsley supposed, no more lies.
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