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Desrtopa comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Don't look at it from the perp point of view, look at it from an average-middle-class-dude or a suburban-soccer-mom point of view.
If there's a guy who, say, committed a robbery in your neighborhood, physical punishment may or may not deter him from future robberies. You don't know and in the meantime he's still around. But if that guy gets sent to prison, the state guarantees that he will not be around for a fairly long time.
That is the major advantage of prisons over fines and/or physical punishments.
On the other hand, making people spend long periods of time in a low-trust environment surrounded by criminals seems to be a rather effective way of elevating recidivism when they do get out, so the advantage as implemented in our system is on rather tenuous footing.
And of course, the prison system comes with the major disadvantage that imprisoning people is a highly expensive punishment to implement.
I am not arguing that prisons are the proper way to deal with crime. All I'm saying is that arguments in favor of imprisonment as the preferred method of punishing criminals exist.