When we began blaming society instead.

I've read multiple times that a large percentage of the crime comes from a small group of people. Jail them, and the overall crime rate drops by that percentage.

It's also pretty clearly a deterrence against people admitting and fixing their own mistakes, both individually and as institutions. Which is exactly what we're seeing here...

Was it ever, though? This is an easy thing to say, but how would we demonstrate that it worked?

Ah yes, the mythical past when nobody did bad things because we punished them correctly.