"Society would not benefit from paying to incarcerate Jussie Smollett. He is not a danger to society, he has suffered enough to deter anyone in his shoes from doing anything like this ever again"

I disagree. Likeminded people will look at this and see that he might have got away with it if he was a little less massively incompetent, or if a few more any means necessary assholes within the system had decided to look the other way.