Over en periode på fem år er antallet af kvinder i latinamerikanske fængsler næsten fordoblet. En af forklaringerne er, at narkokartellerne i stigende grad bruger kvinder til at smugle ulovlige stoffer over landegrænserne.
NEW YORK, 15 April 2014 (IRIN): As growing numbers of women languish in Latin American jails on drug-trafficking charges, their role in organized crime is under the spotlight – as is the prison system that incarcerates them, and the patriarchal society that appears to be failing them.
Although women still represent the minority of prisoners in these countries, their rates of incarceration are increasing much faster than those of males.
The number of female inmates, which has been rising since the 1980s, became more pronounced in the 1990s, when stricter drug laws were enacted. From 2006 to 2011, the number of women prisoners in Latin America nearly doubled from 40,000 to over 74,000, according to an October 2013 briefing paper by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC).
Most women prisoners are incarcerated because of drug-related crimes – usually trafficking. In Brazil, for example, 60 percent of women prisoners are in jail for trafficking.
In Ecuador, while only 18.5 percent of female prisoners were in prison for drug offences in 1982, that figure now stands at 80 percent.
The same upward trend is apparent in most Latin American countries, where an average of 70 percent of incarcerated women are doing time for drug-related offences.
Just why so many women are being held and tried on drug-trafficking charges, as well as the devastating impact of their incarceration on them, their families and broader society, were discussed at a panel discussion at the UN in New York earlier this month, where drug policy experts, including leading officials from Uruguay, spoke about the need for both drug policy and prison reform.
The high incidence of women in prison on drug-trafficking offences came to light when women criminologists conducted research on women in the prisons generally, said Coletta Youngers, panel moderator and IDPC member.
“Expendable drug mules”
So many of the women serving time or waiting to be sentenced were incarcerated for carrying drugs. The women, who tend to be uneducated and poor, are usually “on the lowest rungs of the crime ladder”, according to the IDPC briefing report.
Recruits are often unemployed or have earned money doing domestic work, informal trading or sex work. They work as couriers or “drug mules”, usually transporting small amounts of cocaine or heroin across borders, where the risk of being caught is extremely high.
Drug trafficking is seductive because it allows women to earn money while carrying out traditional home-based roles in the family. They are paid small amounts for their “services” in comparison to male couriers or those above them on the criminal network ladder, for whom the monetary rewards from drug-trafficking are far greater.
The women couriers, however, “serve as expendable and easily replaced labour for transnational criminal networks”.
The “mules” carry drugs in their luggage, strapped to their bodies or swallowed in capsules. Usually several “mules” are put onto international flights so that even if some are caught, others will get through.
Commented Coletta Youngers: “We have big machinery to fight drug-trafficking but we are filling up jails with people who have never had any opportunity at all. Their first contact with the state is usually when they end up in prison.”
Many of these women seemed unaware of the risks involved when drawn into the trade by their partners or families, who would tell them: “Just carry this. Nothing will happen; everything will be alright.”
These words were repeated constantly by the women, say the researchers. Expected to stay at home and be breadwinners in a patriarchal society where going out to work is looked down upon, they are nevertheless frequently left to raise their children singlehandedly, under great pressure to feed, clothe and school them.
Gender issues, drug policy and prison
Læs hele artiklen her: http://www.irinnews.org/report/99944/women-paying-price-of-latin-america-drug-wars
