Logo UE
Copolad
Cooperation Program between
Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union
on drug policy
No Result
View All Result
Copolad II 2015-2020
  • COPOLAD
    • What is COPOLAD?
    • Context
    • How we work
    • Objectives
    • Participants/Allies
    • Technical team
    • Public Tenders
  • Work Areas
    • National Drug Observatories
    • Demand Reduction
    • Fight against drug trafficking
    • Alternative Development
    • Control of drug precursor chemicals
    • Proportionality and criminal alternatives
    • EU-CELAC dialogue on drug policies
    • Women and Drugs
    • Policy innovation
  • Program Results
  • Knowledge Portal
    • COPOLAD III Meetings
    • Directory of centers and services
    • Library
    • Blog
    • Work groups
  • Comunication
    • News
    • Albums
    • Videos
    • Press releases
    • COPOLAD in media
  • English
    • Español
  • COPOLAD
    • What is COPOLAD?
    • Context
    • How we work
    • Objectives
    • Participants/Allies
    • Technical team
    • Public Tenders
  • Work Areas
    • National Drug Observatories
    • Demand Reduction
    • Fight against drug trafficking
    • Alternative Development
    • Control of drug precursor chemicals
    • Proportionality and criminal alternatives
    • EU-CELAC dialogue on drug policies
    • Women and Drugs
    • Policy innovation
  • Program Results
  • Knowledge Portal
    • COPOLAD III Meetings
    • Directory of centers and services
    • Library
    • Blog
    • Work groups
  • Comunication
    • News
    • Albums
    • Videos
    • Press releases
    • COPOLAD in media
  • English
    • Español
No Result
View All Result
Copolad
No Result
View All Result
Home Blog

Rethinking Gender-Sensitive Justice: Women, Drugs and Criminal Alternatives

Poverty, social exclusion, lack of access to services, resources and meaningful opportunities are underlying factors that drive many women to enter the lowest rung of the drug trade.

07/03/2024
in Blog
recorteviñeta8m
Compartir en FacebookCompartir en TwitterCompartir en Linkedin
Beatriz López Lorca and Mario Germán Sánchez González are COPOLAD III experts in penal alternatives.

With a rate of 30 women deprived of liberty per 100,000 inhabitants, the female prison population rate in Latin America is the highest in the world. On International Women’s Day, it is essential to reflect on the unique challenges women face in the criminal justice system, especially when it comes to minor drug-related offenses. Deprivation of liberty for such offenses has profound and often devastating repercussions on the lives of thousands of those deprived of their liberty, both personally, as well as in their families and communities.

In recent times, criminal policy on drugs has been characterized by a maximization of criminal law, what does this mean? A greater use of criminal law as a tool to combat crime and guarantee social order, which in this case is materialized in the lack of proportionality in the treatment of minor drug offenses, the excessive use of pretrial detention, and a clear commitment to prison as the main retributive strategy; a space in which criminal alternatives are significantly reduced.

This approach has also permeated the general population, conditioning its understanding of the drug phenomenon and associated crimes, leading to demands for more control and security that ultimately translate into a reinforcement of drug interdiction policies and, of course, greater punitiveness and criminal populism.

As for women, who represent 8% of the prison population in Latin America, their incarceration is on the rise; reporting a 56% increase of women in the prison population between 2000 and 2022, compared to a 24.5% growth in the general prison population in the same period.

The consequence: a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

📊In Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru there is more than 30% women imprisoned for drug-related charges, compared to the percentage of men.

👉🏾COPOLAD III supports proportionality and penal alternatives in cases of minor offenses.

📽️Beatriz López Lorca, PhD in Criminal… pic.twitter.com/LF6FZDmm8O

— COPOLAD (@ProgramaCOPOLAD) March 6, 2024

Different Impacts
Women incarcerated for minor drug offenses experience a number of differentiated impacts compared to their male counterparts. In addition to the social stigma associated with incarceration, many women face the loss of custody of their children, which can have lasting emotional and psychological consequences. Furthermore, the lack of adequate access to mental health services and drug treatment programs for women with problematic drug use within prisons exacerbates existing problems and hinders successful inclusion into society once they are released.

Incarceration does not address the structural causes that lead women to engage in drug-related activities. Poverty, social exclusion, lack of access to services, resources and meaningful opportunities are underlying factors that drive many women to enter the lowest rung of the drug trade as a means of livelihood. These determinants of criminal behavior are, in turn, factors of recidivism, which confront us with a panorama of inequalities and social asymmetry.

In this context, it is urgent to move towards a new criminal rationality in terms of proportionality and the search for alternatives to incarceration for these crimes and, in particular, for women. To advance in a policy dialogue between the branches of government and institutions at all levels, involving the perspective of civil society and generating ways of working that comprehensively address the inequalities that are the origin and basis of the problem.

International Women’s Day is a good time to reflect on and re-evaluate our policies and practices in relation to women in the criminal justice system, particularly with regard to minor drug offenses. Adopting a more humane and community-centered approach not only benefits individual women, but also contributes to building more just, equitable and sustainable societies for all.

The COPOLAD III Program is working in this direction, that of improving the response capacity and proportionality of penal frameworks in the face of drug-related challenges, as well as in the development of alternatives to detention or imprisonment aimed at reducing recidivism. Along this path, COPOLAD has been accompanying national processes (Costa Rica; Paraguay; Trinidad and Tobago and, soon, the Dominican Republic), while generating articulations with regional organizations that work along these lines, and that have the potential to leverage changes at the regional level and guarantee the sustainability and scaling up of the results that COPOLAD supports, as is the case of COMJIB and AIDEF.

Cartoon on penal alternatives made by the COPOLAD III team with Costa Rican illustrator Amanda Nájera.8M-2024-eng
Tags: 8MAIDEFalternativescomjibcosta ricaparaguaypenal alternativesregionalwomen

Últimas noticias

Guide for line 171 (option 6)

Life is our answer

Legal pages

  • Legal notice

  • Privacy police

  • Cookies policy

  • Accesibility

Social media

COPOLAD is a consortium formed by:

4.-Version-negativa-color-con-tagline-1024x375
logo iila

Collaborating partners:

logo giz
No Result
View All Result
  • COPOLAD
    • What is COPOLAD?
    • Context
    • How we work
    • Objectives
    • Participants/Allies
    • Technical team
    • Public Tenders
  • Work Areas
    • National Drug Observatories
    • Demand Reduction
    • Fight against drug trafficking
    • Alternative Development
    • Control of drug precursor chemicals
    • Proportionality and criminal alternatives
    • EU-CELAC dialogue on drug policies
    • Women and Drugs
    • Policy innovation
  • Program Results
  • Knowledge Portal
    • COPOLAD III Meetings
    • Directory of centers and services
    • Library
    • Blog
    • Work groups
  • Comunication
    • News
    • Albums
    • Videos
    • Press releases
    • COPOLAD in media
  • English
    • Español
Copolad II 2015-2020

© COPOLAD. Programa de Cooperación entre América Latina, el Caribe y la Unión Europea en Políticas sobre Drogas.