I am not sure what the law is at present, however, if there were a law in place whereby the skipper and crews of these boats faced severe jail terms for people smuggling, into Australian waters, surely this would be sufficient deterrent for others to reconsider thier actions.

Now I am no rocket scientist, however, I would assume it would be very difficult to arrive illegally on a boat, if there were no boat crews willing to risk imprisonment, as a consequence of their actions.

Has this option been considered?

rehctub,
this would be far too simple & effective a solution for the academic minds in Authority handle. They'd be at a total loss at something that works. A bit like the dog chasing the bus until the bus stops.

There's about as much cense in that as that bloke hitting his head on his way out.

Dear rehctub,

Your suggestion of stopping the boats won't work.

At present when the boats with the boat people
come into Australian waters the boat people are
taken off the boats, the boats are destroyed and
the crew are inprisoned.

This has been going on since the early days and hasn't
discouraged the boats from coming.

The people smugglers take the money from the refugees,
they hire a boat owner, from a poor fishing village,
the owner hires local villagers to work as the crew,
and the boats set sail. So the smuggler and the boat
owners get their money and don't pay the consequences.

It is the villagers who get punished. That is why you'll
never stop the boats by this method.

Admittedly, after a few years in prison, the crew is
sent back to Inonesia. In the meantime their families
get the benefit of their efforts. So while they sit in
prison, (under good Australian care) their families
live off the income they were given as crew members.
So it's a win/win situation for all concerned from
their point of view.

Butcher, you raise an important issue previously considered.

The following is an extract from a paper presented by Dr Michael Grewcock, who teaches criminal law at the University of NSW. He is the author of ‘Border Crimes: Australia’s war on illicit migrants’, published by the Institute of Criminology. It is a good read if you want to keep up with such issues.

>> This issue was highlighted in August 2010, when approximately 120 Indonesian ‘suspected people-smugglers’ detained without charge for periods of up to nine months at the Darwin immigration detention centre, engaged in widely publicised protests regarding the delays in the investigation of their cases.

Many of these people are believed to be boat crew. Their fate had been raised in March 2010 by President Yudhoyono, who was reportedly concerned that the 173 alleged smugglers then detained in Australia were predominantly fishermen and undeserving of mandatory five year prison sentences.

Imposing mandatory sentences on such people might be regarded by the major parties as a valuable ‘get tough’ strategy for domestic political purposes but it is difficult to see how it operates as a meaningful deterrent or a blow against ‘organised crime’.

Moreover, the sentencing regime comes at a significant financial cost, given that the courts will be required to sentence those detained currently to total of at least 648 years’ jail.

Some courts are also beginning to criticise the mandatory sentencing regime. In October 2009, two crew members from the SIEV 36, the boat that exploded off the north-west coast in April 2009, were sentenced in the Northern Territory Supreme Court. At the time of the explosion, Prime Minister Rudd described those involved as ‘the absolute scum of the earth.’

However, in sentencing the pair, Judge Mildren made it clear, that had he the choice, he would have imposed a much lesser sentence than required given their backgrounds as poorly educated fishermen from coastal towns, confronting economic hardship and offered work to crew a boat ...

cont'd

Cont'd ...

Unless we acknowledge that smuggling operates as an integral part of the refugee experience, and that undercutting it requires that governments facilitate entry, rather than engage in increasing elaborate border controls, refugees will continue to take risks, some smugglers will continue to make money and a lot of fishermen will serve mandatory prison sentences for no good purpose in Australian gaols. <<