To be fair, dementors are consistently depicted as pure evil that has no place in society. The funnier thing for me is how the Ministry is a militarized law enforcement body that functions as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the magical society.

But there are things you can't unsee once you revisit the series as an adult, like all the harmful tropes that's casually littered throughout the series. From unpleasant people almost always being portrayed as fat and ugly to house elves who have a frightened reaction to the idea of being freed from enslavement, and cunning, greedy creatures with long, hooked noses that run the wizarding bank. If that weren't too on the nose, that bank even had a seven pointed star on the floor in the movies. Oh, and Kingsley Shacklebolt is quite an interesting name to give a fictional black person. And that's barely scratching the surface.

Azkaban was basically Abu Ghraib on steroids, and for any petty crime, as you say. I remember thinking "what kind of bleak dystopia are they living in, and why have they accepted it so wholly"?

Not to mention the whole "muggles are basically subhuman" thing.