You've read the opinion piece his mother wrote that criminals can't be culpable for their actions because free will doesn't exist-- right?
The irony is that if one truly believes that position, then it is also pointless to try and persuade people to also believe it. Because if free will does not exist, then whether or not people are going to hold criminals culpable is also pre-determined. I'm either someone who does or someone who doesn't.
Now, if you truly believe that position, then you also can't fault her for writing that piece. Because she was going to do that regardless. She didn't have the choice to not. And it could convince people. Because they were going to be convinced by that argument the minute they came across it.
It's turtles all the way down. If free will doesn't exist, nothing actually changes. Because we can't choose to defy our inclinations.
So that piece is either written by someone stupid or someone who thinks other people are stupid.
Someone moderately intelligent can reason to the turtles and realize that you can't really change people if that were the case. Enough people in the right places just can't be convinced and your work is in vain.
So this has to be someone who either doesn't see the full implications of their position. Or doesn't expect anyone else to see it. The first is ignorance. The second is hubris.
Your one-line summary is incorrect, if you are referring to the above article.
“United States parental income and education are the most powerful predictors of whether a three-year-old will end up in the boardroom or in prison”. She is following the belief that incarceration is retribution, which is not particularly effective at preventing crimes, and perhaps there are better ways society can avoid future crimes. I admit I didn’t read most of the article, because it is written in a style that doesn’t interest me.
"Earlier I mentioned a third position on the issues of determinism, free will, and moral responsibility: skeptical incompatibilism. The skeptical incompatibilist agrees with the libertarian that we are blameworthy for our actions only if we have free will in the requisite sense (the incompatibilist part). But, contra the libertarian, the skeptic concludes that we don’t have the requisite free will, or at least there is no persuasive evidence that we do. Although a minority view, skeptical incompatibilism has many eloquent defenders in contemporary moral philosophy. I have trouble seeing the case against it."
and
"Why, then, have so many thoughtful people invested so much intellectual energy in making the world safe for blame? Here are some possible explanations.
(i) We can’t not believe in free will, and hence in moral responsibility, because each person’s daily experience of life is as an agent. [...] The fact that we are all instinctive libertarians has given libertarian incompatibilism a free pass on the empirical front. If those instincts are impossible to dislodge—if they are the firm deliverances of ordinary experience—then some accommodation must be made. But if the predisposition to blame is no more than an instinct and habit, the argument for accommodation is not a moral one. [...] (ii) Even if conduct is not blameworthy, blame is an indispensable tool to control antisocial behavior. This justification does not rest on the moral desert of the party we blame. It rests on the social benefits that flow to the rest of us from locking up the morally blameless and throwing away the key. [...] (iii) Blaming others is a way to show respect for them. [...] (iv) Blame is here to stay, and if we can’t beat it, we might as well do what we can to civilize it."
I can't see how this can't be seen as anything except a hard refutation of the concept of blame as morally just, arguing instead that we continue to use it out of instinct and convenience even though it is objectively immoral to blame -- because free will does not exist or at least we cannot prove that it exists.
Looks to me like a summary of other people’s arguments, and lack of free will is only one explanation.
I read the article as trying to diagnose why the justice system blames the individual, even though a majority of an individual’s actions come from their society.
"I have trouble seeing the case against it". (i) is expressing the view that the inability to not believe is a wrong and cognitively defective position: "the predisposition to blame is no more than an instinct and habit,"
Ideally this perspective would lead to a push for better access to mental health professionals and viewing prison as rehabilitation vs. retribution. However I could see it being used to support things like capital punishment.