[mlechu]

Agree that time spent preventing cheating is preferable to time spent detecting or punishing cheating, and that all are terrible distractions from time spent actually teaching. In response to OP saying that honor pledges are unhelpful, GP only mentions that they can make the punishment part less painful and time-consuming, but I can personally confirm GP exhausts the prevention route (including putting out "novel and strange" assignments :) ) before trying to detect and punish cheating, at least in my experience.

I've heard many a story about professors treating it like a trap door, paying no attention to prevention and much more to detection/punishment to the point you'd think they're sadistic pleasure out of it. (I doubt they are, but you'd have to numb yourself to it in that position.) In certain ways, I guess this is better than pushing people through to the next class—giving them no option but to catch up quickly or cheat more—but it isn't great...

OP mostly talks about detection/punishment, but I think it's also the job of course staff to make cheating as impossible as possible before it happens. Engaging and novel assignments are great; putting more weight on exams is low-cost and acceptable.