Jennifer Fleetwood | City, University of London (original) (raw)

Drug policy reform (mostly on drug trafficking) by Jennifer Fleetwood

Current and proposed sentence guidelines for drug-trafficking offences in the United Kingdom are ... more Current and proposed sentence guidelines for drug-trafficking offences in the United Kingdom are underpinned by the neo-liberal ‘commonsense’ assumption that greater quantities will yield a greater profit, which deserves greater punishment. At present, this is achieved through the use of weight to determine the maximum sentence available (five kilos for Class A drugs). Drawing on ethnographic research with drug traffickers imprisoned in Ecuador, this paper problematizes the use of weight as a measure of seriousness. This research finds that mules often carry greater quantities than professional traffickers and that therefore sentence guidelines premised on weight will punish mules disproportionately.

Purpose -This paper seeks to analyse the content and implications of resolution 52/1 of the Commi... more Purpose -This paper seeks to analyse the content and implications of resolution 52/1 of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the United Nations (UN) titled ''Promoting international cooperation in addressing the involvement of women and girls in drug trafficking, especially as couriers''.

Many people find this page because they are looking for information on possible sentences for tra... more Many people find this page because they are looking for information on possible sentences for trafficking cocaine (or heroin). Here you will find information on punishments for drug trafficking.

‘Drug mules’ are now recognised as a distinct category of drug offender. It is widely agreed that... more ‘Drug mules’ are now recognised as a distinct
category of drug offender. It is widely agreed
that they play a minor role in the international
drug trade, and are sometimes coerced or
tricked into carrying drugs across borders, and
so merit lesser punishment proportionate with
their lesser role. In 2010, the United Nations
upon nations to ensure that punishment for
drug offences is proportionate.
This briefing paper examines a sentencing
innovation introduced in England and Wales
in 2012, with the stated aim of achieving
greater proportionality in the sentencing
of drug mules. Analysis shows that greater
proportionality has been achieved, although
some caveats must be made. Addressing
disproportionality especially benefits women
drug couriers. Critics have previously noted
that excluding mitigation, including caring
responsibilities, has produced a double
disproportionality.
Sentencing reform in England and Wales is an
important example of reform with potential
international relevance to nations currently
reviewing sentencing for drug trafficking offences,
that can usefully inform the development of more
proportionate punishments for drug couriers.

Aims: In February 2012, new sentencing guidelines for drug offences became effective in all court... more Aims: In February 2012, new sentencing guidelines for drug offences became effective in all
courts in England and Wales. An explicit aim was to reduce the length of sentences for drug
‘‘mules’’ and so make them more proportionate. Methods: This article examines their early
impact drawing on data from the Court Proceedings Database and the Crown Court Sentencing
Survey for importing/exporting a Class A drug. Findings: Overall, the guidelines have achieved
their intended aim. The length of the average custodial sentence for drug trafficking fell
following the introduction of the guidelines, largely due to taking defendants’ roles into
account. Notably, three-quarters of those in ‘‘lesser’’ roles received sentences less than four
years, representing an important change. Nonetheless, around 10% of mules received very long
sentences due to the continued use of drug weight in sentencing. Conclusion: The new
guidelines represent an internationally important innovation in drug policy reform.

Patterns of drug use, sales and trafficking are profoundly gendered. Most users, dealers and traf... more Patterns of drug use, sales and trafficking are profoundly gendered. Most users, dealers and traffickers are men, so women suffer from their " Cinderella status " whereby interventions are aimed at the majority, and neglect to seriously consider their impact on women. Responses to women involved with illicit drugs must take gender into account to produce fair outcomes that ensure international human rights obligations and meet the reality of women's lives. Significance Women and men are impacted by drug policy differently. This is the case not only for drug use, but also with regards to treatment and punishment. Despite being a statistical minority in all aspects of the drug trade, women tend to be most involved in the lower levels of the trade, where the greatest concentration of arrests occur. Women additionally experience greater prejudice and judgement due to gendered social expectations. Since women often are, or are expected to be caregivers, their involvement with drugs has gender specific repercussions. Analysis Drug use and drug cultures Drug use and drug cultures are male dominated. Internationally the level of illicit drug use is about twice the rate for men compared to women. Women tend to try drugs at an earlier age than boys. As a result young women and men may have similar degrees of experience with drugs in early adolescence. Teenage boys 'catch up' quickly and by their late teens are more likely to have tried 'harder' drugs (e.g. cocaine, heroin, and synthetics such as methamphetamine) than women, and be more regular drug users. There are important exceptions, relating to ethnicity, disability, marital status, and so not all women (or men) will fit these general patterns. In the UK, researchers have also noted important demographic changes with young people who are now less likely to try drugs than previous generations.

Drugs: education, prevention, and policy, 2015

Aims: In February 2012, new sentencing guidelines for drug offences became effective in all court... more Aims: In February 2012, new sentencing guidelines for drug offences became effective in all courts in England and Wales. An explicit aim was to reduce the length of sentences for drug ‘‘mules’’ and so make them more proportionate. Methods: This article examines their early impact drawing on data from the Court Proceedings Database and the Crown Court Sentencing Survey for importing/exporting a Class A drug. Findings: Overall, the guidelines have achieved their intended aim. The length of the average custodial sentence for drug trafficking fell following the introduction of the guidelines, largely due to taking defendants’ roles into account. Notably, three-quarters of those in ‘‘lesser’’ roles received sentences less than four years, representing an important change. Nonetheless, around 10% of mules received very long sentences due to the continued use of drug weight in sentencing. Conclusion: The new guidelines represent an internationally important innovation in drug policy reform.

Popular and political discourses about drug trafficking are premised on a gender binary based on ... more Popular and political discourses about drug trafficking are premised on a gender binary based on sexist stereotypes. Simply put, popular and political discourses about drug trafficking tend to describe men as the brains and women as mere bodies. Academic research on drug mules and drug trafficking tends to rely on, rather than problematise, this gender binary, limiting contemporary enquiry and knowledge about drug trafficking. Furthermore, this gendered binary informs anti-drug trafficking policy international in harmful ways.

Narrative criminology by Jennifer Fleetwood

Emerald Handbook of Narrative Criminology, 2019

War of the End of the World tell epic stories of poor indigenous people fighting for their physic... more War of the End of the World tell epic stories of poor indigenous people fighting for their physical and spiritual lives. Both describe fictional characters, inhabiting the impoverished states of Chiapas in Mexico (Castellanos) and Bahia in Brazil (Llosas), inspired to revolt, by real people and events. As in these books, intertwined Catholic and local beliefs were important, narrative resources in actual indigenous revolts against ethnic, class and colonial hierarchies. Narratives can also legitimize conquest, and not just rebellion, as shows in his analysis of the link between Old Testament narratives and the colonization of the USA. Biblical stories move: carried and passed on by people, traversing continents and oceans. Narratives also travel in time, enduring thousands of years, continuously changing and intermingling with other stories.

The work of Bourdieu has increasingly gained interest in criminology. His theoretical framework i... more The work of Bourdieu has increasingly gained interest in criminology. His theoretical framework is rich and arguably the most sophisticated approach to social inequality and difference in sociology. It has however, been criticized for bias towards the structural aspects of social life, and for leaving little space for the constitutive, and creative role of language. We argue for the inclusion of narrative for understanding street fields. Based on qualitative interviews with 40 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we describe the narrative repertoire of the street field, including stories of crime business, violence, drugs and the 'hard life'. The narrative repertoire is constituted by street capital, but also upholds and produces this form of capital. Street talk is embedded in objective social and economic structures and displayed in the actors' habitus. Narratives bind the street field together: producing social practices and social structure.

This article argues for the value of narrative criminology for feminist explanations of women’s l... more This article argues for the value of narrative criminology for feminist explanations of women’s lawbreaking. Contemporary theories note the significance of material gendered inequalities; however, narrative offers a way to include discursive aspects
of gender. Drawing on recent developments in narrative criminology, this article analyzes how women may “talk themselves into” lawbreaking. Analysis draws on interviews with three women with diverse experiences in the drug trade and shows how drug trafficking was narrated as impossible, meaningful, and inevitable. A narrative approach therefore offers ways to understand how for some women, under some circumstances, lawbreaking may become meaningful.

Starting from the premise that experience is narratively constituted and actions are oriented thr... more Starting from the premise that experience is narratively constituted and actions are oriented through the self as the protagonist in an evolving story, narrative criminology investigates how narratives motivate and sustain offending. Reviewing narrative criminological research, this article contends that narrative criminology tends towards a problematic dualism of structure and agency, locating agency in individual narrative creativity and constraint in structure and/or culture. This article argues for a different conceptualisation of narrative as embodied, learned and generative, drawing on Bourdieu's notion of habitus. Social action, which here includes storytelling, is structured via the habitus, which generates but does not determine social action. This theorisation understands structures and representations as existing in duality, according a more powerful role to storytelling. The article concludes by discussion of the implications of such a shift for narrative interventions towards offending.

Research methods by Jennifer Fleetwood

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Crea... more Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Prisons in Ecuador represent a globalised field. In this fieldwork confessional I outline my plac... more Prisons in Ecuador represent a globalised field. In this fieldwork confessional I outline my place within this field (characterised by global inequalities), and describe the ways in which I gained entry to the community of foreign nationals. In particular, I focus on the construction of being foreign as a specific membership category, as well as the role of narrative and storytelling in bridging international and social divides, fostering a shared sense of community, and the role of visitors as listeners for inmates' stories. This narrative practice made researching drug trafficking possible, however such stories require careful interpretation to avoid misinterpretation. Introduction Before I was an ethnographer, I was a backpacker. In 2002, I spent two months in Ecuador learning Spanish and 'travelling', like many other middle-class, white British kids. During a month long stay in Quito, I heard I could visit Brits imprisoned for drug trafficking. With little deliberation, I noted down the instructions and the following Wednesday set off for the men's prison with my passport, the name of the inmate I would visit, and a carrier bag of cigarettes, chocolate, and toilet paper (these being the things I thought a prisoner from home might like).

Women in the drug trade by Jennifer Fleetwood

This chapter looks at Ecuador where the number of women imprisoned has soared since 1991. The cha... more This chapter looks at Ecuador where the number of women imprisoned has soared since 1991. The chapter draws on ethnographic research conducted by both authors in the largest women’s prison, located in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. The first section looks at the supply-side interdiction policies implemented in Ecuador and demonstrates that women are not collateral damage but intended targets. Next, it describes how the war on drugs has changed prison and the profile of inmates as a result of interdiction efforts. The second section describes the effects of these policies from the perspective of two groups of women imprisoned in Quito: Ecuadorians and foreign nationals. We conclude that while these women’s experience as mothers/prisoners differs greatly, the war on drugs produces a number of outcomes that disproportionately punish women and their families.

This paper examines men's and women's motives for working in the international cocaine trade as d... more This paper examines men's and women's motives for working in the international cocaine trade as drug mules drawing on research conducted with an international group of drug traffickers imprisoned in Quito, Ecuador. This paper finds that many mules were motivated to work as a mule by economic circumstances characterised by poverty. However the meanings of poverty were diverse, and can be better understood as relative deprivation.

Drugs: education, prevention, and policy, 2015

Aims: In February 2012, new sentencing guidelines for drug offences became effective in all court... more Aims: In February 2012, new sentencing guidelines for drug offences became effective in all courts in England and Wales. An explicit aim was to reduce the length of sentences for drug ‘‘mules’’ and so make them more proportionate. Methods: This article examines their early impact drawing on data from the Court Proceedings Database and the Crown Court Sentencing Survey for importing/exporting a Class A drug. Findings: Overall, the guidelines have achieved their intended aim. The length of the average custodial sentence for drug trafficking fell following the introduction of the guidelines, largely due to taking defendants’ roles into account. Notably, three-quarters of those in ‘‘lesser’’ roles received sentences less than four years, representing an important change. Nonetheless, around 10% of mules received very long sentences due to the continued use of drug weight in sentencing. Conclusion: The new guidelines represent an internationally important innovation in drug policy reform.

Emerald Handbook of Narrative Criminology, 2019

This paper offers a rare insight into women's experiences dealing crack cocaine. Drawing on inter... more This paper offers a rare insight into women's experiences dealing crack cocaine. Drawing on interviews with eight women, this research finds that, although the retail-level crack trade is male dominated, it is not simply a man's world. This paper examines the strategies that successful female dealers employed, demonstrating that women reflexively took their gender into account to made cognizant choices about what, when and how to deal. Dealing strategies were a response not solely to the gendered nature of the drug market but also to women's gendered social positions, relationships and identities. Performing respectable femininity was a key strategy for keeping dealing hidden and keeping out of trouble. This paper is underpinned by the concept of 'doing gender'.

Book Reviewed by Alexandra Caro

Íconos - Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 2013

Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World, 2011

Encyclopedia of Transnational Crime & Justice, 2012

Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 2012

Book Reviewed by Alexandra Caro