I know nothing about punishment tbh, my ds was always such a good child I never had to punish him. If he ever did something silly, a good talking to about why he shouldn't have done it generally worked. (He's a grumpy teen now, irritating and dismissive but still a good kid!) 
Dd is a very different child. She has absolutely NO respect for anything in our home. She takes things and hides them, hairbrushes, my jewellery, keys etc and will happily watch me ransack the house rather than admit it. (She even hid our kitten once and watched me frantically running around the house thinking it had escaped). She is a messer, can't leave anything alone. If I buy something (example, my house phone died, I bought a new one, before i'd even unpacked the shopping in the kitchen she had it out of the box and had lost the instructions, now I have a phone I cant hear and dont know how to change to ringtone on). She tears up boxes in seconds, so if something doesn't work I haven't a box to send it back in. I've found in the past, food opened and put in a cupboard to go off. I dont even know when she does it because i'm right here. She has a little laptop (netbook or notebook is it called?) ds's old one, she managed to break the screen. I paid a fair amount to get it fixed. She is careless with it, leaves it on the floor, down the side of her bed..I didn't know this until I came across it obviously.
Today I find some things of mine (not in her bedroom, not in mine, stored away in the cupboard) chopped to bits with scissors and hidden (badly). I said not a word, just showed her the bits when she came home from school. She screamed her head off. I didn't raise my voice at all. I said we needed to talk about why she'd done this. After she stopped crying (about half an hour) I said that for two days she would have no computer, no ds (nintendo that is, not her brother ) and no nickleodeon. She said she didn't know why she chopped my stuff up.
Then cried, and cried. She is so sensitive, cries at the slightest thing and maybe it's my own fault because I hate to upset my children but enough is enough.
Oh, and she's 8 btw, old enough to know better.