News

Women paying price of Latin America drug wars

17 April 2014

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).

This article highlights the alarming situation of women involved in drug trafficking and sex work in Latin America.

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