Free Will And The Criminal Justice System

ChRIS said:

If people vary in the degree to which they have free will, the prisons might be said to mostly consist of people with less free will.

ChatGPT said:

Exactly, that’s an intriguing and deeply unsettling way to frame it. If we accept that free will isn't an all-or-nothing concept but instead varies among individuals—due to factors like biology, upbringing, environment, mental health, and even random events—then the criminal justice system could, in a sense, be seen as disproportionately affecting people who have less control over their actions.

People who end up in prison may, to varying degrees, have less free will due to factors such as poverty, exposure to violence, or neurological differences. Those with more privilege—better education, stable family life, mental health resources, etc.—might have more opportunities to exercise what we think of as free will. In that view, prisons would not just be filled with people who “made bad choices” but with individuals who, for various reasons, had less capacity to make better choices in the first place.

This approach challenges the whole concept of personal responsibility in a way that’s uncomfortable, because it implies that much of the blame and punishment is misdirected. The system becomes an attempt to control people who, in some sense, didn’t have the same ability to make a different choice to begin with. This raises questions about fairness, the effectiveness of punitive justice, and how we define “bad choices” in a deterministic world.

It also touches on the potential for reform in both individual lives and the broader societal system. If we were to acknowledge that people’s capacity for free will varies, then efforts could shift from punishment and retribution to rehabilitation, social support, and addressing systemic factors that reduce individuals’ ability to make better decisions—like poverty, mental illness, lack of education, etc.

The conversation would then move from one about blame to one about what we can do to address the factors that limit free will and create environments where people have more opportunity to make choices that lead to positive outcomes. It could be an argument for prevention, early intervention, and social equity as much as for punishment and incarceration.