@mistermack Prison only works in physically taking pathologically dangerous people out of society. It is pretty impotent in the long term sense for less serious crimes, like persistent theft or fraud etc. Once labelled a criminal, I imagine a fair few think: " I'm fucked, might as well carry on." What is happening with this kind of thinking is that, by labelling them a criminal from the beginning, one has attacked and destroyed the whole person. What have you got left to work with? They aren't going away.
The sense of being a criminal has lost it's gravitas, such that the behaviour-modifying potential of applying that label has been lost. It pervades at every level of society. The difference from the the past to now is that it's naked.