Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
I disagree. The fact that the existing penalty doesn't eliminate smuggling simply means there is some subset of the population that is willing to take on the risk for the money involved. If that risk were reduced, not only would more people be willing to take it on, but the cartels could pay them less to do so, thus smuggling more contraband for the same amount of money.
|
Firstly, this is not as straight-forward as you're implying. For example, if a prison sentence of 25 years for murder is dropped to say 15 years, I wouldn't say that the murder rate of a country would go up, for the simple reason that the mindset of a murderer isn't focused on getting caught. On the other hand, if we're talking about shoplifters who were getting reduced sentences for stealing, then I'd agree lower sentences would encourage greater stealing as it's a casual crime. Now if we look at drug trafficking, again a person that does this is of a particular mindset that has to often travel halfway around the world to commit the crime and take a huge personal risk in an often alien environment and is often aware that on completion of the crime, they may not even get fully paid for their services, along with having nerves of steel (the two accused girls excepted here) For these reasons alone, a rigid 5 year community programme in the country where the crime is committed is as good a deterrent as 25 years in prison, because if people are willing to risk 25 years, it shows that the penalty is ineffective.
To be honest I'm punching in the dark here with you, as I don't know how you actually feel about the crime that has been committed (innocent til proven guilty of course) as you've questioned certain aspects of what I've said, without actually stating your own personal opinion (if you have then excuse me)
Quote:
|
I don't know the situation that well, but wouldn't the airport officials on both sides (source country and destination country) need to be corrupt for that idea to be true? How would corrupt Peruvian officials help get smugglers through US customs, for example?
|
I'm not sure if you've understood what I was implying here. Firstly in this case, Peruvian officials are only responsible for what goes on in their own country, and by and large here in Europe customs officials to a degree rely on the efficiency of the Peruvian system. I've flown in and out of a number of Latin American countries over the years and one thing is certain, they are stringent on both locals and foreigners when leaving the country on long haul flights, but when the passengers reach European soil, all EU citizens basically walk through, with the chances of being stopped very slim, but that is not the case say for a Peruvian, who as a non-EU citizen will then face another lot of stringent checks for a second time, for this reason alone, the drug barons prefer European mules. So you see, the Peruvian officials have created a bottleneck at the airport, which should be able to nab nearly all kinds of smuggling if they weren't so corrupt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
Sure, but since he was pointing to corrupt airport officials I got the impression we were talking about a commercial jet and not a private plane.
|
I've not even thought about private planes, but then again I don't much know about custom controls for them.