Why free will probably does not exist, and why we should stop treating people -

[Aroura]

He's not arguing that it does, if you read what he typed.

However, locking up someone who caused harm and is dangerous =/= punishing someone who caused harm and is dangerous, and people need to stop conflating these 2 as if they were tied in any meaningful way. :p

That -is- how we "punish" people who've done dangerous things.  By locking them up....... 

So you admit we lock them up, not to keep us safe, but to punish them. That is the problem. 
Incarceration alone is a terribly remedy to crime.  It does not decrease recidivism (as a matter of fact, it increases it), and it certainly does nothing to prevent crime in the first place. Statistics back this up.

Incarceration alone should be a last resort for incurable criminals.  
Instead we use incarceration as a first resort, and behave as if punishment should somehow cure people of their criminal behavior, which is stupid, as it doesn't.

I don't think anyone is arguing that we should stop keeping the public safe.  What we are arguing is that prevention and rehabilitation should be focused on, instead of punishment.

I've argued the same many times...and I like to sweeten the pot by explaining to people who think free will is a requirement that very little, if anything at all, would have to change as regards our justice system in order to do so.

Just clarifying. You think our current justice system has all the tools in place to focus on rehab instead of punishment....but does not?

Punishing a machine for doing what it is programmed to do is pointless and cruel, no different from people. It is better to try and fix the program.  If the program cannot be fixed, then yeah, you need to prevent it from causing more harm, probably with incarceration, but more humane incarceration than what we currently employ.

Well, we program (and construct) our machines for a range of acceptable use and functions..and when they malfunction we discard them or reprogram them.  If you wanted to make the analogy hold to people.......

Not sure what you are arguing here.  We discard most of them (or really, break them even worse and call it "justice"), instead of attempting to reprogram them.  Unfeeling machine or feeling person, this seems entirely backwards.