Both of those are hopeless as the US crime stats show despite the medieval punishment system.

It's more about preventing the root cause of crime: culture and economy.

Your societal reference frame is bad and you should feel bad. Gilded age had all the punishments and stil humanity worked all things unguarded like a corrosive material. Which meant, all things public were burdened with a anti theft tax, a guy with a stick. Which is why it makes economically sense to pay a thief to sit at home and play video games, as otherwise you would need to hire him, to guard a bridge. Non surplus societies aint pretty.

Which unfortunately is not a solution since harsher punishments have shown to not prevent crime.

You’d have to use some pretty extreme measures like permanent removing every thief and every person buying copper from thieves from society so they can never steal again.

Anything less isn’t going to stop it. See drugs… the death penalty for drug use is extremely effective. It’s also horrific but hasn’t stopped us before, so why should it stop us now?