I also think you have no idea how much it costs per prisoner per year.

I also think you have no idea how much harder it is for someone to get a job, housing, a partner, etc after they have a conviction. Or how much whatever life they had falls apart, which includes partners, friends, family. And guess what happens when you strip away all of someone's social connections? They lose that safety net, and are now dependent upon whatever society as whole provides. And in the US we have people saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" non-ironically, not realizing the whole fucking point of that phrase is that recovering from poverty in the US is extremely difficult.

That money is better spent on helping people who are not able to afford basic necessities, because that is why a lot of people commit property crime.

I suggest you actually open up some studies on this subject because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Or just open up a chart reflecting the economy over the decades and compare it with property crime rates.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world by both headcount and percentage of the population. How's that working for us? We have one of the higher property and violent crime rates among developed nations. Far higher than nations where criminals are imprisoned for rehabilitation, not to punish. Things like giving them a cell that looks like a bedroom, not pen in an animal shelter.