By all accounts, West Point cadet Adam Ake deserves a pat on the back.

The 21-year-old from Anchorage, Ala., will graduate in May as our nation’s top military student from the United States Military Academy. And, oh yeah, he’s a Rhodes scholar, too.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

His parents must be proud, beaming with the anticipation of seeing Ake lead the nation’s brightest young military minds toss their white hats up to the world at the full-of-tradition graduation ceremony.

There is, however, a catch, a pretty big one. Ake’s father, Dr. Kenneth Ake, is in prison for raping five women on his examination table.

But Adam Ake wants his father to see him graduate anyway.

Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles doesn’t.

Ake e-mailed Knowles last week asking that his father be granted a weekend furlough. “I realize that allowing a particularly notorious criminal like my father to enjoy the benefits of special attention may draw you fire. …

Nonetheless, I ask you as a fellow soldier, paratrooper and Alaskan to consider this a favor granted to me, not my father,” he wrote.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Adam Ake, a man who took it upon himself to bring honor back to his family name. It is, however, hard to have sympathy for Kenneth Ake, a convicted rapist.

Gov. Knowles made the right decision in keeping Kenneth Ake in prison.

It’s not as if the older Ake has enrolled at a fat farm for a couple of months. The man is in prison. Prison isn’t simply a place to eat and sleep. It’s a place of incarceration, a place of punishment.

Inmates ought not to be able to come and go as they please, even if it means missing the hard things — like a son’s graduation from West Point.

It’s sad that Adam Ake won’t have his father at his graduation.

It’s justice that Kenneth Ake can’t attend his son’s graduation.