I will discuss both conditions here, first i will give my opinion on why should lawbreakers should be sent to prison then i will discuss why not it always good choice to sent them in prison.
It is obvious that if someone break any law, no matter how small it is, they lawbreaker must be sent to prison. Our constitutaion specifically mentioned the punishment for lawbreakers. If we shows kindness then it will wrong message to others. Lets take an example and understand. Suppose there are two persons, person A and person B. If person A kills person B and we show kindness towards person A and leave him without sending to prison, then other people will think, if we kill someone we can be free just paying some fine. And imagine if everyone person living in this world think like this, then it will be a chaos everywhere. Because everyone think they will give money or some fine and shut the worlds of anybody they want.
Now if we think or see this situation from other perspective, the answer will be different. What if someone doing some minor crimes, sending them prison does not make any sense to them. Let say if person A abuses person B and for this person A is going to prison. Do you think it is correct? What if person B made him to do so. There will be so many such minor crimes and people sent to prison for these crimes. Instead if someone is doing such minor crimes, instead of sending him prison we can do one other thing that is making them to work for the local community. This will sets an example to the society and we are not weasting the talent by sending him to prison for such small crimes, instead we are using their manpower for the betterment of the society.
