punishment and behavior

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 …

…behavior. Comparing punishment to rewards was not really possible with the information that I have collected, but using what I already know about the effectiveness of rewards I would say that a rewards-based system is at least as effective, if not more, at changing the behavior of citizens. I say this because people tend to respond positively to rewards, while there is an abundance of information that show people do not respond positively to punishment.