I'm not very interested in TES, but how often do you choose to go to prison? I can't tell if you're saying going to prison is just lose stats and then cut to the end of it, or lose stats and have to break out.
If it's the former, maybe you tank the stat loss and deal with it. If it's the former, how many times are you actually going to tolerate going to prison rather than loading your save file from before you got caught? In a multiplayer game that's probably not an option. Breaking out of prison multiple times is both annoying and immersion breaking, especially if its the same prison over a short period.
Obviously the concept of a prison break is fine for gameplay. There are whole games dedicated to it. But implementing it as a punishment is by default going to be viewed as either not a punishment, due to it being rewarding, or tedious, because the player doesn't want to do it. Generally speaking, there's intrinsic loss to being put in prison already because you're forced to stop what you were actually trying to do already. Ocarina of Time had the gerudo sequence where you could get thrown into prison if caught, but then hookshot yourself out immediately. That's probably the better choice for most games because having to deal with consequences of prison are very boring. If the system to escape is easy, it should be very short. If it's not easy, you have to question how annoying it is to the player and whether it actually makes the game better.
If it's the former, maybe you tank the stat loss and deal with it. If it's the former, how many times are you actually going to tolerate going to prison rather than loading your save file from before you got caught? In a multiplayer game that's probably not an option. Breaking out of prison multiple times is both annoying and immersion breaking, especially if its the same prison over a short period.
Obviously the concept of a prison break is fine for gameplay. There are whole games dedicated to it. But implementing it as a punishment is by default going to be viewed as either not a punishment, due to it being rewarding, or tedious, because the player doesn't want to do it. Generally speaking, there's intrinsic loss to being put in prison already because you're forced to stop what you were actually trying to do already. Ocarina of Time had the gerudo sequence where you could get thrown into prison if caught, but then hookshot yourself out immediately. That's probably the better choice for most games because having to deal with consequences of prison are very boring. If the system to escape is easy, it should be very short. If it's not easy, you have to question how annoying it is to the player and whether it actually makes the game better.