Through it all, relative distinction should be made as between the purely circumstantial and habitual thief. Not that social bon-bons should be tossed to the former; but that very close to even-handed justice should be meted out to the latter. So much distinctively should be done because by-choice predal felons always constitute the nucleus of crime and criminal intent in America.
Isolated cases will not be entirely congruous with any general rule of penal law; but consideration of the peace and security of the great mass must go before emotional procedure whatsoever which crosses the curbing of the gun-hung hound who goes a'riding to kill.
To split hairs of deterrence over confirmed social hyenas, is to furnish them with the last formula from which to tear things.
At any rate, the most efficient punishment is natural punishment. To make the thief pay in kind is absolutely the best way by which to discourage the thief; and shall he have been made to pay for a "dead horse," he shall have, mayhap, for the first time in his life, absorbed an awakening respect for the law of consequence. And having got so far, mayhap there will be hope for him; but not so, so long as society practically furnishes him grist to grind in such as subterranean "protection," false sentence, false probatory extensions, and false prison régimes which allow him to pick and choose, play up and down and under.
Specifically writing, the time to start "restitution" is in the time of youth, and the occasion, the first offense. Then, when the toll against a lad is comparatively in pennies, the degradation of thieving should be brought home to him in a parole paper contingent upon his restoration, dollar for dollar, of that of which he had deprived another. Thereafter, raise the imposition to suit repetition, so long as he is held subject to probation. At the reformatory, the same rule should hold, plus legal interest on the obligation--shall he have come up through a juvenile school of reform, after having broken probatory parole.
Measures of the kind wouldn't cure all of thievery, since many thieves are born thieves who take to thieving as ducks to water; but they would serve in due time to cause the bulk of potential thieves to consider it most carefully before deciding for the anti-social chute.