Criminal Justice and Free-Will

For centuries Americans have endorsed a pure form of free-will that holds us responsible for most of our actions---and that includes decisions to break the law. When a belief in free-will takes center stage, our theorizing about why individuals commit crimes blinds us to the importance of background factors such as the genes we are born with and the socio-cultural environment in which we are raised. All attention is focused instead on the belief that the offender was free not to pull the trigger, but he did----and so he must be punished.Once a belief in free-will is internalized among its citizens, law-makers focus on punishing the offender rather than identifying the antecedent conditions that are the ultimate cause of his crime. In the U.S., two different areas of American culture have come together to create the criminal justice system we have today---one the one hand, an exaggerated belief in individual rights nurtured by 19th century pioneers who swept all government interference aside in their quest for Western land--- and on the other, the Christian doctrine of free-will which solved the problem of God’s love for mankind in a world teeming with evil. While those two beliefs still hold sway in the United States, there are signs that that they may be eroding. And that holds promise for a future justice system based on rehabilitation rather than retribution.