The former beauty queen who joined a mob of looters during the 2011 Stanley Cup riot should be handed a conditional discharge, her lawyer argued Monday.

That would mean no jail, house arrest or even criminal record for Sophie Laboissonniere, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of participating in a riot.

A second charge of break-and-enter was dropped.

Lawyer David Baker told a pre-sentencing hearing that his client has already suffered greatly from the media coverage of her case, and has tried to use the exposure to help the community.

“She has taken this publicity and used it to deter others from similar kinds of things,” Baker told reporters outside the courthouse.

“The fact that there has been this excessive publicity, that alone is going to deter others from engaging in this kind of activity.”

The principal of Laboissonniere’s Richmond high school said the rioter has addressed the entire Grade 8 and 9 populations to warn that quick decisions can have severe long-term consequences.

“Sophie’s message was basically that she made a mistake and that, realistically, she’s going to pay the rest of her life for this,” McMath High School principal Neil Kamide told reporters.

“I think she very effectively did that for us, she shared that message.”

Laboissonniere approached the school with the offer last year, prior to pleading guilty. She spoke with smaller groups of students separately, but Kamide could not recall how many times she visited the school.

Crown is calling for two months of house arrest, followed by probation and community service.

Laboissonniere was 20 years old when she ran through the smashed doors of London Drugs in downtown Vancouver and grabbed chips and bottles of water on June 15, 2011.

She was previously dubbed Miss Congeniality at the Miss Coastal Vancouver pageant in 2011, and had hoped to appear in the Miss World Canada 2011 contest before she was sidelined when her mother fell ill.

The judge hearing the case is expected to make a sentencing decision next month.

With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Lisa Rossington and files from The Canadian Press