Inept Smuggler Hides Cocaine in Xbox 360
- Thread starter The Wooster
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You're not the only one. I think the jaw-dropping maximum sentences are supposed to be a deterrent. Shame they don't seem to actually deter people. (Funny that: criminals operating under the assumption that they won't get caught.)Kakashi on crack said:
*shoves hands in pockets and grumbles away into the sunset*
OR don't be in the drug business.rapidoud said:
The dangers are astronomical, from being incarcerated for life in a hellish prison or being murdered by your competition with little ability to go to the police for help. And you have a huge chance of being detected, especially with the wide use of sniffer-dogs where they have yet to allow any explosives, drugs or any chemical contraband escape their detection.
The only people who profit in the drug business are the kingpins who rule through terror of violent retribution to get people to trade drugs while keeping their hands clean, and those who rob drug dealers who have virtually no protection from the law, and the latter don't last long.
Drug dealers live in crappy dives not to keep a low profile but because drug dealing is a poor business strategy. Yeah, you can utterly exploit addicts so they have to sell everything but the clothes on their back to feed their habits but the kingpin takes all the profits.
So drug dealing remains an employment of desperation, you don't get highly competent individuals in this work, you get the type of people too dumb to realise the risk is not worth the reward and can't perform the simple task of driving from A to B without attracting the attention of the law. Not that there aren't competent individuals in the drug trade, I know the Central American Cartels have even made miniature submarines to smuggle drugs across the Gulf of Mexico avoiding the US Navy. But that is for transfer of massive volumes of drugs rarely.
Well the logic is supposed to work the inverse of the lottery. You have a low chance of winning but the benefits of winning are huge, so many play it. You may have a small chance of being caught drug smuggling but the penalty for being caught is too high.MetalMagpie said:
I think the penalties certainly deters MOST people. I mean what percentage of people would turn down being a drug-mule BECAUSE of the penalty of being caught? A huge majority I'd safely assume. Even if they were offered vast sums of money for an "easy job", to spite all assurances they probably won't be caught the danger is too high to be worth the risk. Drug dealers have to find utter dupes - complete idiotic fools - to agree to drive around with such contraband. Such idiots are likely to not follow basic road laws and get pulled over. Such high penalties work in so much that the cops don't have to deal with smart drug smugglers.
The smart guys in the drug business work on intimidating, lying and manipulating other people to get their hands dirty, while they always stay out of it yet take the largest cut. They convince little kids that they are "brave warriors" by agreeing to carry guns and shoot at anyone that "threatens" them.
Also there is a useful aspect in such long sentences and that is in plea bargaining. This is such a useful tool for investigators, leaning on the poor chump who was convinced to carry these drugs they want them to either rat on their employers so they get out in 5 years rather than 50 years... or even be released straight away if they agree to wear a wire. Now they are again used as a mule but for a wire, not drugs, now they are again at huge risk of capture (and being killed) for high reward (not going to prison till the year 2062).
So basically the "full sentence" is not for EVERY drug mule they catch, just the Drug mules who are dumb enough to not sing like a bird when they get caught.
Informants are the bead and butter of law enforcement. The FBI puts particular emphasis on flipping prisoners in record time, convincing them to turn informant and even agree to wear a wire or testify in court. And you can't do that with threatening a mere 5-year sentence against the threat that the drug-baron who hired them threatened to kill him and worse.
Of course it's open to abuse. Some young man who comes back from a holiday with a little wacky backy as a soveneer shouldn't get the same sentence as is used to intimidate major drug smugglers who have several kilos of uncut cocaine. But over-zealous prosecutors have been known to take it too far to "make an example" of the slightest infraction with the highest penalty if they have nothing to give, and would certainly intimidate other potential drug-mules.
I'm not disagreeing with any particular point you've made. But I still find it hard not to roll my eyes at the massive sentences when the vast majority of drug mules locked up in the UK are women from Eastern Europe who can't cut a deal (because the people they work for will never set foot in this country) and have no fear of prison (because they'll be better fed there than they were back home). So they enter the country, get caught at the border, get sentenced, get locked up in a UK prison, get released again, get booted from the country, then go back to doing exactly the same thing. We have women's prisons full of these people.Treblaine said:
It's also astonishing how supposedly "smart" drug dealers can be. I knew a guy who got caught dealing large quantities of pills while attending Oxford University. He didn't go to prison at all in the end, so I suspect he was able to cut a deal. (Although another possible explanation is the judge decided that - as an educated young man - he was more beneficial to society in the workforce than in prison.)
The Chinese actually execute people for dealing drugs, although I haven't seen any analysis about whether or not this has helped.
Well, it's a pretty difficult situation where it's better to be in prison in a foreign country than free in your own country, maybe if they are in such a habit of prison->release->smuggle again then they can be more easily recruited to entrap smugglers. Somehow lure them into the UK or into a country where they can be extradited. Or perhaps they can convince prisoner exchanges, so immigrants who smuggle drugs into UK serve out their sentence in prisons of their motherland? Perhaps that would be a suitable deterrent.MetalMagpie said:
And of course repeat smugglers are easier to catch each time, even with experience and a new passport they may even be recruited, convinced to pass on fake drugs to entrap their handler. Once you've got him, work your way up the food chain till you get the big fish.
China isn't the best example as they have the same problem as the notorious Draco (origin of the term Draconian) in that they cannot find a punishment worse than the death-penalty that there is not sliding scale of persuasion. And their death-penalty is applied so inconsistently and inflexibly that it is less used as a deterrent to crime, more an encouragement for political corruption as it is unscrupulous political support, not cooperation with investigation, that gets you to avoid the firing squad.
The point of a 5-99 year sentence is you can extract more and more information and cooperation for gradually decreasing sentence. Doesn't work as well with the death penalty vs life in prison as both are such terrible options, either way you will never have a free and happy life again.
