In the contemporary world, some group of people assume that education is the best way of reducing crime rates instead of locking up criminals. I certainly believe that, although educational system is vital, deterrence remains the primary inhibitor of criminality.
To begin with, despite the clear results education is able to bring about, deterrence remains the main reason why people do not commit crimes. If there was no threat of prison, people would feel free to steal, murder or commit any crime they choose. As an example of the effect of blocking up criminals is some countries with mandatory sentencing measures such as Vietnam, whose regulations targeting to impose severe sentences on drug-related crimes, thus the country itself seems successful in dealing with drug trafficking and distribution.
On the other hand, most of the criminals caught in recent periods of time are highly educated. To be precise, these groups of people have immense knowledge about the seriousness of the impact, along with possible punishment associated with it. For that reason, education may not hold a long term effect of terminating the criminal rate, therefore, they continue to be involved in such punishable criminal offences and get caught by the law enforcement agencies. For instance, a police statement revealed that a recent bank robbery in Kerala, India was carried out by a group of engineers who were aware of the consequences of the crime and its weight on the society.
To conclude, although evaluating educational practice might seem as a viable solution by offering less strict imprisoned-related policies to offenders, conscious understanding of the committed harm of breaking a law, as well as the need to be eliminated from the society are the main reasons to the imprisonment.