Is Cannibal Cop A Criminal?

In 2012 an NYPD police officer that goes by the name of Gilberto Valle was arrested for conspiracy to commit kidnapping and using the police database for inappropriate reasons that did not relate to his work. Gilberto Valle was a man in his late 20's with a wife and a newborn baby. To some people he had a perfect life, he had a great job, a wife and a new born baby but to him it wasn't enough, he eventually turned to the dark web where he could talk in chat rooms with other men and women about all of his dark fantasies that he had about women. Of course he couldn't discuss his dark thoughts with his wife or other people in his daily life so the chat rooms were seen as his outlet.

During the investigation against Gilbert all of his messages from the chat rooms were exposed to the media. In the chat rooms he talked about cooking his wife, kidnapping women that he met in high school and etc. Gilbert has even told the chatrooms that he had a basement full of equipment that he could use to torture women with but when the police searched his house they found nothing he told the people in chatrooms he said he had in his house, he didn't even have a basmement in his home.

Gilbert only faced 6 months in jail because he looked up different women information on the police data base and he only planned to kidnap women but he never actually did it. Should someone be charged for crime that they never committed? Should someone go to jail just for their dark thoughts?