There is something a little perverse about making them work the job as a punishment. If I was the employee I'd feel a little insulted, like "Don't worry, we gave them a much worse punishment than a big fine or jail time, we're making them work the same job as you do!"
> And Gilligan [(the judge)] insisted that he wasn’t trying to equate fast-food service with incarceration, as some of the reaction to his sentence accused him of doing. (From “Weekend Update” on SNL: “Fast food … where your job is other people’s jail.”) “This wasn’t about punishment,” Gilligan said. “This was about gaining empathy.”
> … It’s a tantalizing idea: If an angry passenger had to work a bumpy regional flight from Birmingham to Knoxville, would they stop being so mean to their flight attendants? Rehabilitation and accountability have long been goals of criminal-justice reformers seeking alternatives to incarceration,
> … The jury remains out on creative sentences and how effective they can be.
Looking at it through the lens of punishment is itself a kind of controversial view. I don’t have a horse in this race, but I’m glad people are trying out other ways of reducing bad behavior other than the ones we already know are just barely effective.
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.
You forgot that they are getting no compensation & they can't quit. Community service is a common punishment, and sometimes, the punishment is designed to fit the crime, like a litter bug having to pick up litter on the side of the highway.
Someone working the counter at a fast food place already knows their job sucks and the worker in the article believed that working a job like hers was even harder [than jail].
