Is puishment effective in changing Children's behavior?

While we are on Child Protection Week alot of topics should be discussed as a society with regard to children of this generation .

One may ask themselves, do parents and guardians know the difference between discipline and punishment? Do parents know how this discipline and punishment can create trusting relationships between parents and children nor even break the relationship? Is the something wrong that communities are doing that makes children of today to have bad attitude and behavior?

For generations prior to this, such as the 80s and 90s, we were disciplined by beating. Some would use their hands, belts, objects, while others used verbal punishments.Most of us in the black community grew up knowing that a girl child should be home at 6pm every day. Most of the times they would say "you must be inside the house,not just in the yard but in the house "or else you knew that you were going to get punished for coming home late.

The reality is, with this kind of discipline, most of us ended up "just fine" and are now disciplined and responsible adults. Then came the 2000s, the 21st century generation that is ill-mannered and highly addicted to drugs. The same strict parents who raised us seem to have difficulty disciplining these children. As in the past, some of the 2000s are being punished harshly, which seems to make them worse and more difficult to deal with.

To cut the long story short, all of this makes me wonder if punishment can really change children’s behavior? (both in a good way or bad way).