[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment

[gts]

I've been thinking lately about crime and punishment...

As a compatibilist I define free-will, roughly, as the capacity to act
freely according to one's will or nature at any given moment.  We all have
free-will. But this does not mean the future, including one's future
choices and actions, cannot also be completely determined by the past. On
the compatibilist view, free-will is compatible with determinism.

The criminal chooses freely to commit the crime, but it does not follow
necessarily that he could have chosen otherwise. If we could re-wind the
clock to the moment before the crime, to the exact same circumstance, he
would certainly choose to commit the same crime again. His choice to offend
was a free choice (in that he was not forced) but it was also a
determined choice (in that it was in his nature at that moment to make
that choice).

There is no need then for any philosophical hoo-hah about that
quasi-religious mental construct we call 'moral agency', nor is there any
need for the associated idea that we should punish people as retribution
for having acted wrongly when they could have acted rightly. Such
considerations are just so much metaphysical baggage.

The burden of proof is on the prosecution, and no prosecutor can
produce evidence to prove that a defendant could have acted rightly. As
far as anyone knows, the criminal acted freely *but according to his
nature*.

So, in an enlightened society, the goal of a correctional facility should  
be
simply to correct the nature of the criminal (rehabilitation), and to  
correct
the natures of would-be criminals through his example (deterrence).

Retribution ought not figure into the equation.

At least that's my take on this subject. Comments?

-gts