Jones was in tears outside the court

Jones, 32, was sentenced for lying about steroid use and involvement in a drugs fraud case.

"It sends out a strong message to certain athletes that choose to cheat, that it no longer is about just cheating the sport," Lewis told 5 Live.

"If you take it into the realm of lying when questioned, you'll get punished."

How the investigation led to Marion Jones

Lewis won gold in the heptathlon at the 2000 Olympics, the same event where Jones won an unprecedented five medals.

The American was later stripped of them after she admitted to a New York court that she had taken steroids.

606: DEBATE Will Jones now always be remembered as nothing more than a "drugs cheat"? BBC Sport's Sarah Holt

The man behind the drugs scandal which led to Jones's jail sentence, Victor Conte, agreed that the disgraced star's plight would act as a deterrent.

Conte was the head of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), a San Francisco-based laboratory at the centre of a steroids scandal in professional sports, which was linked to the substance which Jones used known as "the clear".

Jones will leave two children behind when she goes to prison

Having served four months in prison for his part in the Balco operation, Conte told BBC Sport: "I feel very sad for Marion and her family. Marion did make some very poor choices and she does deserve serious consequences.

"There is no doubt in my mind that she has learned gigantic lessons.

"Hopefully, she will be able to serve as an example to others and help them to make good decisions."

"I certainly don't condone her repeated lies, but I do feel especially bad for Marion's mother and her two children.

"Marion was one of the most celebrated athletes in Olympic history and her mistakes have caused her to be stripped of everything she worked so very hard to achieve."

The IAAF, athletics's world governing body, said it hoped Jones - once she has served her time in prison - would work to persuade young athletes against repeating her mistakes.

"There's a lot of sadness for Marion and her family. Six months is a lot," said IAAF spokesman Nick Davies.

She has lived a horrible life for the last few years knowing that her cheating was going to catch up with her US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart

"But you do hope that it will be a deterrent to others. Hopefully when she's out of prison she can help the IAAF and other organisations to ensure that other people don't follow the path that she certainly followed.

"It (her doping) has certainly hurt the image of the sport."

US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart agreed that Jones's fall from grace was deserved, given her previous strenuous denials of any wrongdoing.

"It's certainly a sad day for the sport," he said.

"When athletes like Marion Jones accomplish what she accomplished and then make such vigorous denials and attacks on those who were simply trying to do their jobs, it's hard to appreciate the negative impact that has on our current athletes.