Women drug mules imprisoned around the world

Sasha Brooks and Kimberley Anderson are two young working class British women from Nottingham. They are currently in prison in Sao Paolo, Brazil, charged with trafficking offences, having been found with 5 kilograms of cocaine. A chance meeting with some local dealers resulted in what seemed like an attractive proposition—the chance to make some decent money. Instead, they are now trying to come to terms with life in a tough foreign prison, far from those they know and love. The two women share their predicament with large and growing numbers of women around the world: West Indians locked up in the UK for carrying Colombian cocaine, Tajikistanis in Moscow’s notorious gaols for carrying Afghan heroin, Philippinos languishing in Chinese prisons, captured on their way from a resurgent Golden Triangle bearing white heroin from Myanmar. These are just the beginning of a long list.


What all these have in common is that they are mostly female, all poor, and at the lowest rungs of the drug trading hierarchy. The very term “mules” denotes a beast of burden, that which does the labour no-one else wants to do. They are easily recruited, faceless, functional and disposable. Usually they know little or nothing about the people organizing the trade, made up of a sophisticated global alliance of shifting networks, whose upper ranks make money that the mules can barely dream of. Put these people in prison and others just take their place; the only way to dry up the supply is to alleviate the poverty of wealth and opportunity that drives them to take such risks with their lives and liberty.