Maybe the old ideas of publicly chopping off a hand for theft were the best. One way or another it will prevent car theft. Even if simply by making it hard to drive a stolen car away hands-free.
> One punishment for any crime. Execution. [1]
It seems to me that, at least when talking about crimes that harm others, criminality isn’t curable; the kind of person who cause others harm isn’t just going to stop because someone told them “no” or gave some kind of punishment.
If you commit crime you do the time. After getting released if you commit crime you should do exponentially more time.
To reduce crime those situational factors need to be fixed before the criminal is created.