“Sure, I understand we call them “civil”, but we are sending people to jail over these offenses, so they are criminal offenses, no matter what we call them.”
The constitution specifies criminal offenses. If the writers of the constitution had wanted to include civil offenses they would have.
I agree, but these are criminal offenses. It doesn’t matter if we suddenly decide to call them “civil”, they meet the definition of criminal prosecutions. You can call a giraffe an antelope, but that does not make it so.