As Egossi said, staff should be able to use their common sense when deciding punishments. That is what I've always told people to do when deciding on what to do; just use common sense. And for the most part, the staff does a pretty good job with handling it.
If you've seen me post it before in promo/demo threads, I usually link the "Admin Handbook" to newer staff. I don't want them to literally take everything from that thread and apply it to the servers like the thread states. I want them to use it as a margin as to where the limits are on punishments.
Since this thread is correlated with the ban protest thread, the only thing I'd have to agree on is recording demos or having some sort of decent proof. Although, as a person, you don't instantly think to record a demo and then ban the player if they're hacking. You want to punish the player as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Mistakes happen (if said player in that ban protest is actually being truthful), which is why we learn and move on.