The criminal, however, has hid herself in a large crowd of a thousand innocent people who all happen to be perfectly willing to accept the criminal's liability and undergo her punishment. To get a better view you fly over the crowd in a helicopter. Anyone who would continue the search despite the multitude of would-be lambs of God would seem to believe that punishment is worthwhile only if it's carried out against the right person, the criminal whose misdeed should be repaid in kind. Closely related to the idea that a sin debt can be transferred is the idea that God loves sinners but hates sin, and that therefore Jesus 'bore' our sin on the cross so that sin's power over the sinner could be broken. After all, punishment is normally of sinners and for sin.
Sin is just the cause and justification of the punishment, but sinners bear the punishment.
A sin, of course, is just an event, a type of choice of a morally responsible agent. In focussing on the presence of our sins on the cross, however, the apologist seems to imply that punishment is of sin and for sinners, making sin the target of God's wrath rather than that which alone could deserve anger and punishment, the accountable cause of sin, the sinner. The apologist has no trouble claiming that sinners themselves will be condemned on Judgment Day and will descend to hell for their punishment. Here where God's punishment is direct without any substitutive sacrifice, the sinner is emphasized in the judgment and is the target of God's wrath. Yet in God's indirect judgment of sinners through Jesus' sacrificial death, the focus is on sin, a deadly power binding sinners and enslaving them to demons, which is subjected to God's wrath on the cross.