It is amusing that our legal system is so messed up from the ground up. From the very definition of words we chose to use.

"Punish someone for the crime they committed"

What? Do we think criminals are children and spanking them would work?
Now caning, which could be considered a grown up version of spanking, is a well known deterrent... to not get caught.

The problem is we cannot punish criminals.
The money they stole is gone. And if they could earn the money they stole, then why did they steal in the first place?
Getting a criminal to repay society is a fool's errand.

Currently, we punish the society by stealing more, so that we can say that we are punishing the criminal.

It is a very strange system we have.

Now free will and Scott Adams.

He doesn't believe in a higher power, and that really makes discussing free will difficult. In fact, it may be stated that free will exists outside of Mr. Adams' allowed reality box.

However, it is easy to prove free will.
"Do you believe in God?"
If you can answer yes or no to the question, you have free will.

If God needed you to believe in God, you would be unable to do anything but. And i don't mean something like forcing you to believe, where you feel constrained, if you could just break free... But, he could turn you into someone, who at their very core believed in God. He could show up and do Godly things. Whatever would convince that person, God would do that... to each and every person.