I suspect that the abuse team has a few nice shortcuts to deal with the simple/common reports, like a button next to an AR which says "Ban this person for 1 day for xyz reason", which does the job and automatically adds a note to the account.

I wonder what percentage of the abuse reports are those 'simple' or 'common' things that result in a 1 day ban. If the 8 people in the team deal with 95% of the reports by hitting "Ban this person for 1 day" button, then the other 5% which are complicated probably get the time required to investigate properly.

Presumably, also, those 8 abuse team members can delegate to liasons or other Lindens to do the actual grunt work... perhaps the 8 members literally are like a call center and just resolve quickly with one button-push, or hand to someone further down the line.