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Prison sentences most certainly deter - by preventing - crimes the prisoner would otherwise commit if still out walking the street. Yes there is a "cost to society" for the prison and the guards, but at least it is a scheduled, controlled payment extracted in a relatively non-violent way. The alternative is the have the young thug walking the streets, extracting the "cost to society" on an ad hoc basis, in theft, fear, blood, and lives, from whoever is unlucky enough to fall in his field of view. Even if someone could make the case that is somehow a lesser cost in $$ terms, it is certainly not a lesser moral cost.

I can see giving one chance to a first-timer who otherwise is clean, but after that, no.