Why bother catching and jailing all those people if you can scare them from their criminal acts in the first place? The Party wants to stop criticism; arresting

Why bother catching and jailing all those people if you can scare them from their criminal acts in the first place? The Party wants to stop criticism; arresting people for it after-the-fact doesn't undo whatever damage the Party perceived to itself, whereas scaring them prevents the criticism entirely. And scaring people is a lot more scalable than arresting them.