For those who don't understand the dynamics described here, Sebastian Junger has made a film, "Coming Home" that explores why for Vets coming home, it's harder than their last tour. [0]

[0] http://www.wnyc.org/story/the-last-patrol-focuses-on-coming-...

There has to be trust and empathy between the people and the police.

I think we have lots of cities and neighborhoods where the police are from a different culture, imposed from outside. Too often the relationship breaks down and the people start seeing them as adversaries, rather than as guardians. Conversely, the cops also lose empathy for the people.

Ferguson is the clearest case, but this is happening in lots of cities. (In the extreme, it describes an occupation, where the role of police is taken by a foreign military.)

Props to the judge, thats a really beautiful example of humane justice, where the person breaking the law and the one enforcing it can still have some love for each other.

I think we need a political movement to make sure sheriffs, judges and offices represent their communities. As much as possible, cops should be trusted citizens of the neighborhoods they patrol and part of the local culture.

Local election turnout is often low, so a little organization goes a long way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzJm0I4CzuM

The court is located near Fort Bragg, which sees a lot of cases involving Veterans.

His comments in the video about "sometimes they lose their way" was filled with compassion.

We need more people like that in the world.

The war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentencing, brutal probation regimes that throw ex-prisoners back into prison for minor offenses all play a part.

This is systematic problem, media-driven attacks on criminals are a reliable "dog-whistle" issue for politicians and so-forth.

It is encouraging to me when folks involved in this system put forward a critique and try to stop the overall downward trend here.

It is "nice" when someone engages in this sort of act of pure human kindness but this seem like exactly the sort of things that doesn't scale, that doesn't recognize larger problems and basically puts things down as a simple problem for veterans rather than a problem our whole society faces.

Anyone who's spent a bit of time watching courts knows that a given judges sees dozens of people per day who get essentially assembly line justice with 90% of them being sad people who made sad choices with the courts meting out one more level penalties likely to continue these people's downward spiral. It's nice when a judge does one semi-good thing - but I can only see nice, not encouraging, here.

Great... he helped 1 person who suffers from a disorder. What about the other millions?

I do not mean to dismiss his act of kindness but, honestly, who do you think is benefiting more; the judge or the soldier? I would say the judge.

Or to give it the common phrase, "Think globally, act locally."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke

more info: http://justiceforvets.org/what-is-a-veterans-treatment-court

edit:

"Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

It's just the way that these words happen to be defined in English. They stand for different, but related concepts.

Why are you being so combative?

Other sources[1] define empathy as "feeling what another person feels" and sympathy as "having compassion for a person without necessarily feeling what they feel". In that case, the judge is clearly empathizing with the defendant, and not merely sympathizing.

[1] http://grammarist.com/usage/empathy-sympathy/

People use words in a variety of ways - communication: a search for a language that is also yours!

edit: To be even a bit more contrarian here, sympathy in judges is something that I actively dislike, and why I'm a progressive in support of mandatory minimums, which is pretty much blasphemy. Sympathy in judges is why an affluenza defense can work, and why rapists sometimes get sentenced to probation.

Also the US has one off the most harsh sentences of any western country yet still one of those with most crime.

Even if a judge was softer because of sympathy he would still be much harder than most other european judges.

So not exactly anything that backs up your claims.

And empathy in one situation does not automatically mean empathy in all situations. Humans are funny like that.

It's not very hard to empathize with someone who you share similar life experiences with.

Real empathy would be, as you said, giving a shit about all the other felons that the judge cannot already identify with.

Here's my stance: I don't believe in cruel or unusual punishment. I believe that defendants who "remind me of my son" or "remind me of me, when I was a kid" or "me, if I had made one wrong choice" get better treatment than the heartless superpredators that don't look like the judges son.

Will the judge serve life with him when he kills someone because judges keep letting him off the hook?

Because I've had two different friends in two different decades killed by drunk drivers who got only a few years for taking people in their prime off the planet.

Drunk driving when you kill someone should be life. Parole eventually is fine but it should be a life sentence initially.

Whether the judge's actions here will have a long-term impact on Serna is something only time will tell, but I suspect that the knowledge that "hey, someone out there actually cares" can only help.