Reputation is key, if you are a people smuggler, smuggling people from the African Continent to Europe.

New research by Paolo Campana of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, published on Monday, 23 January 2018, reveals that independent operators rather than criminal kingpins control routes that bring migrants into Europe from Africa.
The research into people smuggling, where many entrust their lives to smugglers devoid of any compassion, who charge exorbitant prices to help desperate people reach Europe, examined the findings of an 18-month investigation by Italian prosecutors into the 2013 migrant shipwreck off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, in which more than 360 migrants died, most of them from Eritrea and Somalia. Campana also analysed wiretapped telephone conversations, testimonies, interviews with police task force members, and smugglers’ backgrounds in order to inform his research.
For more: http://news.trust.org/item/20180122000037-5nwsy/
Source: Thomas Reuters Foundation.
Adapted by Anne Kelleher, RENATE Communications.