fygFirst offense of a cheating ban should be permanent.
I definitely get why people want cheating cases to be handled like this, but I am curious if this is truly what you want for the game? Applying permanent bans on first-timers would mean that people like amppis (VAC'd 2013) or Thalash (VAC'd 2012) would have never been allowed to play again after their ban. Speaking from an AC admin perspective, it is hard to tell who has the character to stop cheating and come back clean, and who will continue to cause trouble after their first ban. A lot of cheaters now already alt to try and evade their bans, which in turn gets their ban extended, further increasing the time they have to wait until they are officially allowed to play again. Applying a permanent ban from the start might just increase the amount of people alting to evade their ban because they have nothing to lose.
What I want to say is: Permanent bans for first-time cheaters will not stop those who probably deserve them from continuing their BS; but they will stop those who want to come back and try again clean.
Another thing to consider is the community reaction. For this to work, people would have to trust AC teams in their decision even more than now. There will be no doubt if the cheater streamed with cheat overlays on their screen showing or receiving a TF2 VAC, but what if it is not an obvious case and it's known that all TF2 AC teams generally will never share case evidence? People still bring up how they do not trust ETF2L AC because of an overturned ban which happened ten years ago (mostly by cheaters trying to appeal their own ban), with a completely different staff and a different way of how cheating cases were approached.
Most people will probably not care when a Low player gets banned, but what if the ban hits a Prem/Invite player, or a friend? There will be a lot of responses like "There is no way that they cheated, they are innocent, the AC team is wrong" because people don't understand that even if someone plays at the top level and might have good mechanics etc. it doesn't mean that they can't be using cheats in addition; or just because you assume that you know a player well it doesn't mean that they are always playing clean. Hell, you get these kind of responses even without permanent bans anyways. You just have to ignore them, but that doesn't make people very happy.