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Free will exists in the last discrecionary act of the agent. That is to say, an act becomes determined immediately after the last act is made which could change the outcome of the decision.
Soooo, if an omniscient God who knows all our "decisions" well in advance exists, and our actions cannot ever contradict the predictions he makes about our actions, then those actions were determined by God's prediction, as it was not possible for those actions to be altered after God has predicted them. It is in this way that infallable prediction of a human action by God determines that action and denies the possibility of free will.
That said, determinism, at least in its "soft" variety, does not necessarily suggest that punishing criminals is not an effective deterant because there has been shown a causal relationship between punishment and reduced future crime...
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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