Keeping a slave workforce or pioneering a council house scam? According to our justice system, that's no big deal

What is needed – for so-called white-collar crime at least – is a more imaginative approach to repayment in the broadest sense. How about dispatching the exploitative Batley boss for a spell of hard labour in Hungary?

If the dishonest minority never adequately pay for their crimes, public disenchantment will only grow (Getty)

Every now and again a particular crime report seems to cut through the general din of news and demand a response. All right, you want to ask, so what happened next? Is that where it ends? Is that really all that justice can do?

One such, for me, concerned the sentencing of a housing officer in the London borough of Southwark for “misconduct in public office”. She took bribes to the tune of £2,000 a time to allocate plum council homes to imposters. Some of the 20 or more beneficiaries were in the country illegally; others owned other properties that they then rented out.

In all, the tenancies had a value of £2.4m – which should have been spent on those in real need. The council officer was sent to prison for five years (likely to be two and a half years in practice); three of the beneficiaries to a few months plus community service.

But what about the public money? What about the illegally acquired tenancies? BBC London News asked the same questions. And no answer came.

The council still seems to be trying to evict the fraudulent tenants, without much success. The case, which concluded last month, goes back to 2003-5 – and, surprise, surprise, the tenants don’t want to leave.

Was the council officer required to pay back – to the council? to the public purse? – the bribes she took, and if not, why not? If the money has already been spent (on holidays, apparently), should there not be some way to recover it – the prison sentence is, after all, a cost to the tax-payer? And how about the money illegally saved by the corrupt tenants? If they had other properties, were these confiscated to compensate the council for a benefit the owners were not entitled to? Again, if not, why not?

Oh, it’s all so difficult, you hear councils and other authorities say. And it may well be that the cost of going to court again outweighs the value of the ill-gotten gains.

But not doing so, I would submit, risks offending the deep-seated sense of fairness held by the majority who observe the law. It is another reason why government, and authority in general, suffer from such low public trust.

To many people, the whole judicial set-up appears compromised from top to bottom. Failure to call banking chiefs to fully account for the financial crisis is one place to start. You might then consider how many of those sent in to restore public confidence – Antony Jenkins, say, at Barclays, or Martin Wheatley at the Financial Conduct Authority – were themselves soon replaced by individuals seen perhaps as more compliant.

Some of the same reasons, of complexity and cost-benefit, might explain why errant bankers were left alone with their fortunes, and we see them again in the court orders designed to seize the proceeds of crime. Such orders are announced with great fanfare, but how many succeed? A paltry proportion. A bare 2 per cent is collected. The outstanding debt comes in at around £1.5bn.

Mr Bigs can be threatened with longer prison sentences unless they pay up. But many tough it out in the confidence – not wholly misplaced – that they will have more staying power than the courts.

Another “little” case in my file is from February. “Bed factory owner”, The Independent headline reads, “jailed for using slave workforce.” A Batley businessman, described as “highly successful”, paid his Hungarian workforce as little as £10 a week that sometimes entailed 20-hour days. They had been recruited (and “trafficked”) by a Hungarian gang-master, and the beds they helped produce were sold to reputable companies, including Next and John Lewis.

Leave aside the legal, but iniquitous, gang-master system (introduced after the 2004 deaths of the Chinese cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay), and dare to ask what the factory owner’s penalty was. How does 27 months in prison (a little over a year, in practice) sound to you?

The judge read a stern statement about lost reputations, but a year of jail time in return for years of enrichment and exploitation seems little more than a gentle slap in the face. Were the workers compensated? If so, by whom? Beds made by a work force paid a pittance, then sold to mainstream high street stores, and there were no assets? The public purse has to pick up the tab? Come on; pull another one.

Or take an example from earlier this week. A lawyer in the London suburbs was found guilty of stealing more than £350,000 in a stamp duty scam and sent to prison for 40 months. He must also repay £125,000 – half the proceeds from selling the family home. Granted it may make financial sense not to force his family on to “benefits”, but why should he not have to repay the whole sum, if not now, then from future earnings? He’ll be out, after all, in less than two years.

My file, I readily admit, contains only a random selection – just cases that caught my eye and sparked indignation. I also know, though, that stiffer prison terms, even prison at all, are not the answer, much as we might like to see reckless bankers dragged off in chains. The prisons are overcrowded as it is, and government policy, quite rightly, is to send fewer to jail.

No, what is needed – for so-called white-collar crime at least – is a more imaginative approach to repayment in the broadest sense.

How about dispatching the exploitative Batley boss for a spell of hard labour in Hungary? The housing officer might spend the bulk of her sentence as a (supervised) resident cleaner on council premises. The law should not just allow, but demand, instant eviction for those who obtain social tenancies by deceit. Crooked professionals could face attachment orders that deduct from their pay until the debt has been paid, to their victims or the state.

So long as the law-abiding majority can conclude that a dishonest minority will never pay for their misdeeds in any meaningful way, the perception of injustice will only grow, and with it the resentment that saps public confidence and corrodes civic life.