Would people smugglers ever actually receive life sentences?

The home secretary is reportedly keen on tougher legislation, but are her plans for life sentences seriously under consideration or is this all for show, asks Sean O’Grady

Patel on a visit to Dover (PA)

Every time a people trafficker loads a refugee or an economic migrant on to a flimsy dinghy and launches them into the English Channel, they are passing a potential death sentence on those they exploit. Should the people traffickers themselves not be subject to a commensurate sentence of life imprisonment? It is already a serious offence, carrying a jail sentence of 14 years as a maximum.

However, the home secretary, Priti Patel, is not satisfied with how this has worked in practice, pointing to what she says is an average sentence of three years. Natural justice might demand a more punitive sanction.

Patel also has highly attuned political instincts for what her party and its electoral base would wish to see. Immigration is obviously an issue that has climbed up the political agenda during the Brexit process, and the home secretary must be aggrieved to see Nigel Farage and his Reform Party making political capital out of the continuing arrival of migrants at the shores of Dover.

Though the numbers are modest by the standards of recent flows of people into and out of the UK, and many are in fact perfectly legal under international law, they tend to attract much political outrage in some quarters. Patel is also alert to the forthcoming reshuffle, and the possibility of her job, one of the traditional “great offices of state” being offered to the likes of Michael Gove. As has been observed during the saga of bullying allegations against her, she is tenacious in her defence of her own position.

Politically attractive as a life sentence would be, and arguably appropriate for these callous criminals, it is an ambitious policy. If Patel is looking for a mandatory life sentence with a minimum term, that currently only applies in England and Wales to murder. A stronger “whole life” tariff is reserved for the most serious types of multiple murder or terrorism. The whole life tariff is in effect the descendant of the death penalty, originally mandated by parliament when hanging for murder was abolished in 1969. Again, Patel and parliament may feel that people trafficking falls into this category, if it, for example, involved a high number of fatalities in the most gruesome of circumstances. As an act of retribution, it would certainly attract some popular support.

The main drawback though with a mandatory sentence of great span, “life” or not, is that it might not prove a very effective deterrent. As any driver with an eye out for speed cameras knows, the chances of getting caught have to be weighed against the possible penalty and the benefits of ignoring the law. The people traffickers, by their nature, live in the shadows. They are largely out of the reach of the British authorities, either because they are not based in the UK (though their agents and accomplices might be), or they are too elusive. Since Brexit, cooperation in arrest warrants and cross-Channel police cooperation is not as smooth as it was, even though the British now pay the French authorities £28m to police their beaches. The European arrest warrant is a thing of the past. The Dublin convention and other restrictions on cross-Channel travel by refugees has also disappeared. Patel was an enthusiastic Brexiteer.

A life sentence for people traffickers is a fine promise for a manifesto or for a party conference speech, and many would sympathise with the idea of a fitting punishment for those who make money from human misery. However, what practical difference it would make is debatable, and it might even make those at the top of these organisations even more ruthless towards the underlings in their gangs if it meant less chance of conviction and spending decades rotting in jail. Deterrence is, at best, only part of the answer to a problem that is bound to grow as the weather improves and the seas grow calmer in the months ahead.