To not feel any sympathy for drug-smuggling women?

[DarceyBissell]

Just that really. Two young women facing 25 years in a Peruvian jail for trying to smuggle 11kg of cocaine. Saw they described as 'vulnerable' in one paper. Hardly. Greedy and stupid though.

JUst found this by googling Wobbly's quote. Haven't read it yet: www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/peru-drugs-arrests-melissa-reid-2183904

Crikey, last night I was reading all about "Monarch programming", and here's that Shane geezer like a walking symbol for it! I need to get off the internet!

I heard one of the girls was £4000 in debt, not sure about the truth of that. It's possible that they felt 'obliged' in some way to go through with it, whether because they owed the wrong person money, feared saying no to a dangerous person or found themselves stupidly agreeing to do it in a greedy/drunk moment and unable to back out.

Of course they may have been selfish, greedy young women who saw easy money and a free holiday but without personal knowledge of them and their situation we don't know.

It's easy to judge other peoples lives from afar, hypothetically we're all perfect, in reality people do incredibly stupid things, find themselves in ridiculous situations and make mistakes. When you're young and stupid (or desperate for cash) the amount and degree of mistakes we make are dependent on the number of opportunities to fuck up more than anything else.

Thanks for the link garlic

I really wish people would stop referring to these adult women as girls. They made a greedy mistake, they won't be held held in the hellholes the Peruvian women will be, and they will serve several years at most

They will then spend a good majority of their lives sobbing on tv and in mags about their horrific experience.

As I stated upthread - Prison conditions and sentences are two vastly different things. Why is it when only greedy white girls are caught there is outrage about prison conditions?

They're separate issues. And to be perfectly honest, it makes me uncomfortable that public outrage is only when young white 'vulnerable' snort 'girls' are sentenced to these horrific prisons... Which they're not!

They were greedy and they got caught. Why do they deserve a Western-ish prison when women in the exact same situation (and most of the time, far, far worse) are ignored in the horrific prisons because they're not from the UK/US/Australia?

I guess it just bothers me that every theory from conspiracy to vulnerability is thrown out when the greedy person is from a Western country, but when the truly horrific tales of truly desperate women/men from the SAME country are never reported on and get much harsher sentences.

I'd say the latter is far more vulnerable than the greedy arrogants abroad.

What horrible attitudes some posters on here are displaying. If any of you have daughters their age I am sure you would not refer to them as adult women. Even if they are guilty (we
dont know yet) they still deserve our sympathy for at the very least being naive and gullible.

How do you know 'they were greedy and got caught'? Where are the facts?

I'm another one weirdly fascinated by the Irish women's massive bun. And the clothes swapping that is going on.

Grr, I wish you would stop wildly labelling them greedy.

I have realised that it is emotional laziness.
Easier to say, pah, stupid/greedy than to think about anything too deeply.

True, yellowballoons

if they werent western women most pouring out the sympathy on 2 drug smugglers wouldnt give a shit. 1 rule for some and another rule for others doesnt always happen unfortunately. I could almost think they were carrying out good deeds essential to the Spanish community and its an absolute outrage they were waylaid and caught..no they havent been found guilty as yet, but its a bit naive to expect EVERYONE to see them an innocent, delicate flowers. Not unless everyone here who has teen daughters has to constantly hang onto their ankles because theyre off drug smuggling every time your back's turned (as all teenagers do), anyway...

It's just as lazy to say vulnerable girls...naive...gangs.... barbaric conditions...mistake... What do you think drug gangs are? People moving drugs around the world and selling them. And that includes female people carrying them through customs.

I too feel a BIT sorry for them - locked in a cell abroad, miles from home, must be beyond horrible. But , I don't buy the naïve..as if these girls were living in abject poverty in war-torn conditions or some such, doing what they felt they had to, to try to support themselves/family.

As soon as western women are caught abroad doing something they shouldn't, the standard 'vulnerable, naïve' comments roll out. I went to Ibiza after leaving college, it can be a drugs paradise out there. I had my fun but didn't get involved, loads of girls didn't. But some chose to go that extra mile. Sometimes you do end up paying the price for chasing quick money.

If these girls were trusted to carry drugs wotth such a huge amount of money then there's no way they were THAT naïve - your standard drugs mule wouldn't be given that amount to risk.

Drugs are nasty, smuggling them is no small misdemeanour. There are other causes that would elicit more sympathy from me. Still I doubt they'll be left out there to rot so it'll all come out in the wash eventually.

I never said that they were naive, 'delicate flowers'. Maybe they are! Maybe not, how the heck would we know.

I do know that I feel sympathy. And that is coming from a recovering addict. (Not sure why I felt the need to add that, but it felt important.)

Not sure what my opinion is on the original question but just a couple of points to throw in:

1. 20 years old is young, but not a child. Several 20 year olds are in responsible jobs, married, have children, are carers, in the military, coming to the end of degrees. 20 is not an age where you don't know right from wrong.
2. If you are in fear and concerned and being forced to smuggle drugs why not seek help in Ibiza, on plane to Peru, in airport, at immigration control Ibiza/Peru, when you go to the loo pass a note to someone, when you're stopped immediately say 'thank goodness you have intervened I'm being forced to smuggle drugs'.
3. If you commit a crime (I accept we don't know if these women have) then you should be punished by the local laws/rules. No reason at all they should come to the UK if the offence committed in Peru.
4. Drugs ruin lives- smugglers, users, victims of crime committed to fund habits, families of addicts, area where drugs sold become no go areas, gun crime links, prostitution links. Drugs have been illegal for years and the position is no better. It's just possible legalisation would get rid of a lot of this. Whilst drugs are illegal the misery 12kg of coke could cause means if guilty the punishment should be severe.

I mention Sandra Gregory not because of her age. She may have been a bit older, but she was still very young and naive. She served a much harsher sentence, in far worse conditions than these girls will do (if convicted) and has managed to rebuild her life.

There is no may about it, and she was not a "bit" older. She was in her late twenties. She wasn't young (as in just out of teens) and the last thing I'd have described her as at the time is naive.

Nor was she in an unfamiliar country. She had a bit of Thai to form a foundation for rapid acquisition when in an immersion context, aware of the cultural basics in terms of no-nos to avoid and what gestures are looked upon favourably to keep people on side. She had an established circle of friends and acquaintances who visited and brought supplies during the transition phase so not every contact was coloured with the formality of a consular visit or the guilt/distress of family flying long distance. And she was savvy. Thanks to being late twenties, not just out of teens, and the realities of living and working for an extended period in Asia rather than partying short term in Europe. There was a insulating layer that isn't comparable to the case being discussed.

I just really resent the idea stated over and over on this thread that because of their silly mistake, their lives are over.

That one person, came out the other side and has an academic achievement they should be seriously proud of considering what they went through... is indicative of not a lot in terms of being able to disprove the more likely outcome of a future far more limited in choices due to criminal record, notoriety that follows for years and years after release and emotional scars.

Behind a screen it is really easy to take and staunchly defend a harder line. Because it is removed from reality and mostly academic.

It is entirely another thing to be able to hang onto those opinions when somebody you know (but had no emotional attachment to) is visibly withering from visit to visit. Watching somebody reduced to a piteous state from the safety of the television screen bears no resemblance to being there in the flesh. Where the process of visiting (due to the conditions visitors are required to submit to) is hard going enough to sensitise you to how much worse it must be a few meters away on the other side of the visiting pen.

I changed my mind. I used to be on the side of "no sympathy, don't fuck up in Thailand if you don't like Thai justice".

But when faced with an actual, live person, rather than a name or an image on the TV, I moved to a position where I felt any system of justice, anywhere in the world , that actively or passively seeks to dehumanise and wields power in an arbitrary fashion, because it can, does not occupy the moral high-ground required in order to be charged with the responsibility to stand in judgement of other's moral failings.

the justice system may not hold the moral high ground but nor do the accused in this and other cases. 'young' westerners go to countries like peru and Thailand to deliberately take the piss out of them by defying their laws and practises. these people are not poor enough to put their lives/liberty at risk, but they do, then expect everyone to dig them out of trouble.

no doubt, they met other people who have got away with drug smuggling and they thought they would try it and get some easy money. it didn't work. if they end up in jail, they will be in a comparatively 'cushy' jail in comparison to Peruvians who would end up in a pig sty of a jail. the westerners will be indulged despite breaking the law. it is hard to have sympathy for them.

the justice system may not hold the moral high ground but nor do the accused in this and other cases.

I find that an inherently contradictory form of rationalisation. To roundly condemn moral failings on one hand while condoning them as a form of tit for tat on the other.

If we require that moral failings have consequences for the individual how do we then rationalise the importance of moral failing within the system that judges and punishes them......without being utterly hypocritical and contradicting ourselves?

these people are not poor enough to put their lives/liberty at risk, but they do, then expect everyone to dig them out of trouble.

Poverty is not the sole cause of poor judgement and awful choices. And begging for help when you find yourself in what feels like a surreal nightmare is less about entitled western attitudes than a very normal, human reaction when desperate. Because, we are talking about real, live humans. They don't exist solely as the two dimensional print and film images we are exposed to in the main.

And there are good reasons over and above the "spoiled, piss taking westerners" for people all over the world to be critical when and where the system that stands in judgement is living in a glasshouse while lobbing stones.

Becuase it's the same system that incarcerates locals and African mules who don't get much media attention and tend to suffer a whole lot more deprivation, for far far longer.

they will be in a comparatively 'cushy' jail in comparison to Peruvians who would end up in a pig sty of a jail

But I suspect, like in Thailand, nothing like as cushy and possibly even "oh it's ok if you come and go" as the jails for the titled, socially connected and bemoneied.

In the same timeframe that SG was deemed reprehensible enough to earn the death penalty (which even if rationally you know will never be carried out and gets recinded almost immediately still aims to make a point in term of hierachy of moral failing) a titled man held two people at gunpoint causing PTSD sysmtoms for some years in one of them, then ran next door and pistol whipped a servant causing not inconsiderable phycial damage.

He got three months. On a single charge of not having handed in a military weapon post service, becuase the other charges against real, live human beings sort of "evaporated". He served his sentence in a five star hotel-like prison. That didn't seem too bothered if he popped in and out.

That's what I mean about abrbitarily wielding its power, the highly connected are coddled and the unconnected rot.

When you don't require a system, wherever it happens to be, to occupy the moral highground because "well criminals don't either" then you collude in public acceptance of the sort of inequitable justice as laid out above.

If any of you have daughters their age I am sure you would not refer to them as adult women

Well I have a 20 year old son who I would never refer to as a "boy" of course hes an adult... a man, are women somehow different then?

When it comes down to it drug dealers, cartels whatever I'm sure there are many many stupid greedy people, young and old that they could recruit to attempt to smuggle drugs from a foreign country, they don't need to force anyone at gunpoint! After all I would imagine its a very nerve wracking and anxious procedure to carry out - if I was a drug dealer (which Im not of course!) I would be giving my drugs to the person who would be less anxious than someone forced into it!!!

CarpeVinum when I mentioned SG turning her life around I was not making some kind of inspirational poster comment about how their tomorrow was another day. I have seen a friend in prison in Thailand, nearly losing both his legs from untreated septic wounds, coming home to have a massive nervous breakdown. And that was just 3 months in the Bangkok hilton on a lesser drugs charge.

There is no comparison between Thai prisons and Peruvian ones. Seriously. I have been in many prisons, for men, women and children in this country and the link to the Ancona II unit looks reasonable. Not great, but not horrendous.

It is of course tough to be in jail in another country where it is hard for your family to visit. It would be much harder if they weren't among other English-speakers, as they will be.

I'm sorry I mentioned SG's case, because you seem to have extrapolated it in some slightly weird way as minimising what faces them, because I have watched to much banged up abroad. I have of course watched too much banged up abroad but I have also been inside SAm prisons and worked a lot with Latin American drug traffickers/mules, translating for them. SG's ordeal was much, much worse. When the young women get out, they will have had a horrible time, but I personally see no reason to believe they will be brutalised and traumatised in the way my friend was in Thailand. I believe that there is every chance they could keep their heads down and rebuild their lives.

Recently, my AS son went abroad. Whilst at an airport a young woman asked him to hold her presents as she had too much hand luggage and would he take the stuff through for her. Fortunately, we have drilled him and he had his eminently sensible girlfriend with him and they said No.
They saw her being arrested at the airport.
My ds is very well mannered and under normal circumstances would have said yes of course. Without knowing the background, many of you would be judging him a greedy young thing, too.
Think on. You don't know the background.

Good point Dawn.

We don't know if they were coerced or set up.

I have sympathy.

This 'greedy' word is a bit of an old fashioned word you're all using??

I don't think greed is going out of fashion .

Dawndonnas story is shocking. Perhaps they should be drilling this into kids at school. I remember when I went traveling all I read was a little section at the back of the lonely planet guide on scams that might have mentioned it.