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

[Aroura]

Admit...lol?  OFC we lock them up to punish them, but if we lock them up to rehabilitate them....we're still locking them up.  That's the beauty of it.  Prisons are useful regardless.  They're useful for treating a person as though they had free will, and equally useful for the same reasons if we didn't.  

We'd have to use incarceration as a first resort for any violent crime regardless of whether or not free will exists, and perhaps moreso if we just run with the idea that it doesn't.  After all, how could we then argue, with a straight face, that it was just that once, that he'll be able to "control himself" later?  We couldn't.  Off to the cell they go until they've been reconditioned/refurbished/reprogrammed/recycled....whatever......  

As clarification, I think that the tools we have can be used for rehabilitation, but I wouldn;t go so far as to say we have all the necessary tools for that switch.  -and yes, I think we could make that switch, but..for absurd reasons, simply do not.  

Incarceration is not discarding someone, if you want to make the analogy hold.  Executing them and reusing them to make functional machines would be discarding them.  Though, if criminals are malfunctioning machines...and we want to make the analogy hold, what's the problem...just to play devils advocate?  What -makes- it seem entirely backwards?

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?
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??

Ultimately, the point is, if we realize people do not chose to commit crimes, they do not chose to be evil, then we can focus on rehabilitation instead of the idea of punishment.  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.

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.