Punishment and Behavior The amount of crime in America has been constantly increasing over the years. At the same time, in order to deter this crime punishment enforced by the government has also increased. This is what compels me to argue against the notion that if a society wishes to change its citizens' behavior, a system based on punishments will be much more effective than a reward based system. First of all, there seems to be a very strong relationship between punishment and violence. The main source of this data is 3300 kids and 6000 couples who took part in the National Family Violence Survey (Straus 134). In this study physical punishment is defined as " a legally permi