That's an interesting interpretation. I kind of agree. The risk of this remedy is that this unhinged person might throw food at coworkers or customers. Obviously such an incident would likely land her in that 60 day prison sentence plus additional charges and remedies for those, but the judge is clearly taking the "rehabilitation" approach here in the "punishment vs rehabilitation" debate.

Personally I'm not a fan of that dichotomy. In my world view, government's reason d'etre is to protect the rights of all individuals within its jurisdiction. That means that the penal system, by extension, serves the same purpose. Within that framework, "punishment" and "rehabilitation" are both non-considerations. It's not really up to the state to be the daddy figure to make a criminal feel bad for doing a naughty, nor is it up the mommy figure to try and shape and mold the criminal into a productive member of society. It's up to the state to remove threats to life, liberty and property.

That doesn't mean that a first-offender should get a life sentence or anything. Of course not. And I'm not even necessarily opposed to the idea of the "forced empathy" remedy since I do think that the end-goal here aligns: which is to prevent this from happening again and given the judge's experiences with sending offenders to prison and her stated reason for offering this remedy, it might work. But do I care if this woman wants to improve herself? Not really. I'm far more concerned with her victim and preventing more.

I'm just offering my thoughts because I think it's an interesting discussion about the role of the penal system and appropriate remedies.