Hello!
It's been a while since I wrote anything here, but this caught my eye and I decided to also share my experience and a few other points, to explain the entire situation from another perspective.
For starters, I absolutely understand why Moderators do not need evidence to punish rulebreakers. And it doesn't boil down to just one thing, but it comes down to a multiple number of reasons. As mentioned before those are the trustworthiness of the moderators, the fast pace nature of the cheating that actively happens and the volume of the rulebreakers alone. I'll touch on all of those a bit more.
Number 1: The trustworthiness of the moderators. Believe me, if you try to go into getting the moderator position just so that you could unfairly punish the players, I can assure you, it's not going to happen. While I'm allowed to discuss the helper application and trial in too much detail (as far as I know), I can tell you that the process is neither short nor simple. Each applicant goes through multiple stages in both the application and later the helper trial ensuring the players getting their positions are ready to take on the responsibility. As mentioned by Sanne, a lot of background checks and an interview happen before you even get to helper and the process also takes quite a while, time where you have to prove yourself and show your actions as a community member. And than the real work starts. Helper trial consists of a lot of learning, practicing and tests and is a very well designed course to guide you through learning everything you could encounter as a moderator as well as testing you on all of that. And you only get through, if you have all of the required knowledge and trust, to do so. Believe me, I've been there.
Number 2: The fast pace nature of cheating. When it comes to cheaters, from what I've seen in my 8 years of playing Minecraft, they can be very resourceful. And they come and go very very quickly. Many of them even use accounts they bought for so so cheap, that they don't even care about their punishments and never appeal them. And sometimes, you really do not have the time to get enough good quality evidence to be able to justify the punishment from that evidence alone. Maybe you started recording too late, maybe something corrupted the recording, maybe you were handling another situation and someone blatant just come across your screen. You catch them, you get their name (and no moderator is going to punish without being sure about the player's username) and you ensure that no other players games are ruined by that player.
Number 3: The volume of rulebreakers alone. And I know Sanne already talked about how much space all of those recordings and screenshots take up on your computer, but that's not the only volume. If I firstly comment just on the recordings part, the helper trial usually lasts a month (you can check the team history) and while I never completed it to the end, I still did most of it. And as you can see from the list of ranks, helpers cannot punish, we just gather evidence and reported the rulebreakers. My folder from that one month (I still have it), it is 6.61 GB. One month. Now imagine, being a staff member for a year, maybe 3 years... Yeah, the number adds up. And moderators are way more experienced than helpers so they do even more volume. And secondly, the amount of cheaters can sometimes be quite large. While you are a player, you might spot a hacker, record them, submit the report and than move on, while being a helper or moderator that is taken on a whole new level. Staff members are actively hunting rule breakers. They are where most players are and handling those situations. When you are dealing with such a volume, your first priority is to make sure that the player in question is breaking the rules, verifying that with everything you have learned and than punishing the player, so that you can move on to the next one. When everything is obvious, there really is no need for specific video proof and if anything is questionable, even a very experienced Senior Moderator, gets the proper evidence to back up their punishment.
I know some of the points made have been repeated from what others have said before me, but I still wanted to include them, since while I was a helper for a short period of time, I was never promoted to moderator and everything I spoke of was only my experience and how I look at the entire situation as a regular player.
Hope this helped.
LukaG_