WUNRN
Open Society Foundations - https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/portraits-prison-tell-stories-women-drug-war?utm_source=lat_am_A&utm_medium=email&utm_content=IzF6NjfsYSIXLcqz1Top8XZ9Gv3nSGp5dO5leBfP2q8&utm_campaign=lat_am_A_081515
Women Behind
Bars: Photo Essays Show The Human Female Cost of Current Drug Policy in the
Americas
AMERICAS - PORTRAITS FROM PRISON TELL STORIES OF WOMEN CAUGHT IN
THE DRUG WAR
Women are detained for minor drug-related offenses at
Costa Rica’s Buen Pastor prison. Photo credit: © Jessamine
Bartley-Matthews/WOLA
July 27, 2015 - By Mary Miller Flowers
Across the Americas, repressive drug policies make easy targets of
small-scale dealers and people who use drugs, while doing little to thwart
large-scale traffickers or organized crime. At the same time, harsh drug
policies have done little to curb the production, trafficking, and consumption
of illicit drugs.
Instead, the war on drugs has had devastating consequences for individuals
and communities alike, particularly for those already on the margins of
society, including people living in poverty, sex workers, and racial and ethnic
minorities.
In Latin America, some of the most perverse consequences of the drug war
have been borne by women, many of whom are caught in a
cycle of poverty or addiction that motivates their involvement in the
small-scale sale or transport of drugs. Rarely are women imprisoned for
large-scale drug trafficking offenses.
Their low-level involvement in the drug trade often comes at extremely high
risk—if caught and convicted, they face disproportionately long sentences for
their nonviolent crimes. Such penalties are ruinous not only to the women, but
also to the families they struggle to support.
A recent photo essay published by the Washington Office on
Latin America (WOLA) vividly illustrates this cruel reality. In the Buen Pastor
prison in Costa Rica, where the photos were taken, over 90 percent of the
incarcerated women have three or more children who depend on them. A surge in
the number of women imprisoned for drug offenses has worsened conditions in
already overcrowded prisons and left the families of these women deeper in
poverty.
Once released from prison, these women struggle to find employment, lacking
the skills or opportunities needed to make ends meet. As a result, some return
to selling or transporting drugs, furthering a vicious cycle of incarceration and
poverty.
WOLA’s project is aimed at reforming drug policies to provide for more
alternatives to incarceration and changes in sentencing practices for
nonviolent drug offenders, particularly women. The WOLA project is one of a
number of efforts supported by Open Society that seek to advance human rights
and public health approaches to drug control, and to reform criminal justice
policies that fuel mass incarceration and have a disproportionate impact on the
poor. (For example, see our recent report, The Impact of Drug Policy on Women.)
In the lead-up to the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drug policy in 2016, grantees across the United States and Latin America play a critical role in documenting the devastating impact of prohibitionist drug policies, and advocating for new, effective, and rights-based approaches to drug control, particularly for women.