The free will skeptic aims to articulate a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects retributivism, since this justification for punishment is inconsistent with the skeptic’s outlook, but nevertheless actually works in the real world. In past versions of such an account I’ve emphasized the quarantine analogy for incapacitation together with the value of rehabilitation and reintegration (Pereboom 2001, 2014), and I’ve endorsed Gregg Caruso’s embedding of the view within a public health model (Caruso 2016, 2017; Pereboom and Caruso 2018). Recently I’ve paid special attention to the permissibility and the limits of special and general deterrence (Pereboom 2017b, 2019). Here I set out this view and develop it in certain key respects in response to the latest objections raised against it.

The free will skeptic aims to articulate a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects retributivism, since this justification for punishment is inconsistent with the skeptic’s outlook, but nevertheless actually works in the real world. In past versions of such an account I’ve emphasized the quarantine analogy for incapacitation together with the value of rehabilitation and reintegration (Pereboom 2001, 2014), and I’ve endorsed Gregg Caruso’s embedding of the view within a public health model (Caruso 2016, 2017; Pereboom and Caruso 2018). Recently I’ve paid special attention to the permissibility and the limits of special and general deterrence (Pereboom 2017b, 2019). Here I set out this view and develop it in certain key respects in response to the latest objections raised against it.