Belly it IS an opinion on the idea- if you incarcerate someone at 20 for 20 years, they will be 40- perfectly young enough to pick up most practices in theft to make ends meet;

The repayment task only makes sense to somebody with a sense of responsibility- criminals have no such thing, but instead a gigantic sense of entitlement and an aversion to work (hence why they were in this situation to begin with). Mix this with a need to cover costs and their strongest familiarity with income being from the practice that got them jailed to begin with.

It's a good idea in theory- but opens up too many probabilities of resuming their old practices.
Hence why they should be doing volunteer work of some form, during their stay to cover costs.