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

[The Grand Nudger]

But locking them up does not rehabilitate them.

I also said, incarceration ALONE. Alone, as a first resort, it only breaks people further.  There are many places in the world that have very good rehabilitation programs.  The US is not one of them.  Again, incarceration =/= rehabilitation.  Why do you keep saying it does?

I'd have to have said it once in order to keep saying it....but.....uh...?

Also, there are programs for violence that do not include incarceration. But we incarcerate people even for non-violent acts.  More than half of our prisoners in the US are non-violent criminals.  What is the point of that??

Depends on the crime.  While I'm not, myself, a fan of incarceration for non-violent offense, it's not as though the justification can't be made when..for example..it;s a drug addicts money that keeps a violent cartel running, or a prostitutes labor that keeps a shitty pimp in business.  

Ultimately, the point is, if we realize people do not chose to commit crimes,

Hold on, hit the brakes...who said we didn't choose to commit crimes?  I'm pretty sure we do, freely willed or otherwise.  I know I do.  I mean, I'm sure we can find examples of overwhelming compulsion on whatever we imagine our decision-making apparatus to be...but..whether or not I smoke a joint today......well...probably not one of those examples.

they do not chose to be evil,

-this is starting to snowball into unrelated concepts.  Evil isn't illegal.  You can be an evil fuck and that won't make you a criminal.  

then we can focus on rehabilitation instead of the idea of punishment.

Or on discarding them and starting over, or on some clockwork orange bit of tomfoolery...yeah, sure.  Course, we could rehabilitate even if we did have free will, and it's a little bit easier to make the argument for rehabilitation as such if the "rehabilitated" person has some measure of control over what they do.  If they can somehow choose not to, for example, beat the fuck out of someone.  If we don;t have to pretend to reinvent the wheel for no apparent reason -just- to get a little better at the way we treat our inmates.  

It completely neuters the entire idea of punishment.  Gay people fought very hard about the idea that they are born that way (though not true, more accurately they are made that way both at birth and over their lives), that being gay is not a choice.  The point was to eliminate the idea of their choosing it.  And when that idea became more widely accepted is when they really started making social progress.  If we could realize that criminal behavior is no more a choice than your skin color or your sexuality, maybe people would be more willing to focus on humane treatment like PREVENTION and rehabilitation, instead of just tossing them in jail or killing them.

I don't know, criminality seems to be a little bit more of a choice than the skin color you were born with...or whether or not you like dick....regardless of whether or not we have free wills.  

You seem to have reached that conclusion, that we need better prevention and rehab, without coming to it through determinism.  But the fact is most people cannot get there alone.  Look at the numbers of Christians who wield the word choice as a sword.  When we take that away from them, a good portion do become more compassionate.  A few stick to it, but they continue to insist either being gay is a choice, or those that accept the science, then fall on the argument that having gay SEX is the choice, so since they are choosing to sin, they are still bad...blah blah.  

I think helping people realize that free will is illusory, but that all others still have feelings, so it matters if you reprogram, torture, or throw away, then society would be better.

Well, I'm not all that interested in taking things away simply because somebody, somewhere, misuses it.  All thi feeling stuff sounds less than rational (or does it), and reprogramming and torture toe an awfully fine line. I;m personally of the opinion that rehabilitation works regardless of whether or not we have free wills, and it;s a good idea regardless of whether or not we have free wills, as is incarceration. It's not exactly, imo, a "pick one" sort of issue, nor do I think that treating people as though they didn't have free wills (or...more stangely, choices) would necessarily lead to what you and I think is a swell idea.