Speaking solely to your first paragraph here, I've seen this sentiment expressed before, and it always strikes me as off in some way. I've not committed a lot of thought to the topic until recently, so apologies if my thoughts here are muddled or unclear.

I can pretty easily convince myself that a lot of what I'll call "smaller" bad deeds are primarily deterred by the threat of consequences: I never shoplifted a candy bar because it wasn't worth the perceived consequences. But I have a substantially harder time convincing myself that most people don't commit "grander" crimes largely because of a similar fear. Taking murder as the example and myself as a case study, I cannot fathom committing a murder because it feels wrong, there is a part of my mind that recoils at just the thought of it. Is that because the potential consequences of that act are ingrained into my psyche, or is there another reason? I'm inclined toward the latter, certainly. Not to mention that punishments geared toward deterrence often seem to not prevent murder from occurring.

I don't have any grand insights here, just sharing my observations on the topic, as it's come up surprisingly often recently in my experience on the internet.