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.

Dawndonna's son didn't say yes tho.

The incidents are not similar. These girls had drugs worth a million on them, & were smuggling it.

I'm generally wondering what would happen if 2 foreign women were caught trying to smuggle a massive amount of drugs into the UK. I doubt young/vulnerable/naive/forced and so on and so on would come into it.

My money's on outrage

Mistress The only reason he said No is because we had drilled him. He too could have had millions of pounds worth of drugs on him. That's the point I'm trying to make. We do not know if the girls were coerced in any way whatsoever. All we know is they were caught.

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.

The women's prison in BKK has never been comparable to the men's prison in terms of conditions. Thank god.

I think you are focusing exclusively on the relative conditions, and overlooking the entirely different set of circumstances in your equation when you use SG as an example to illustrate your point.

Had she been just out of her teens, naive, newly arrived as a tourist with no language/cultural knowledge or skills, devoid of a long standing (and reporter avoiding) local support system during the particularly hard transition phase (when the realisation that this is real, and it is going to happen, and there is no magic wand in consular hands to magic it away hits) then she would be more comparable with the case in hand.

But then, had her circs been so very different from what they actually were, even if the prison conditions been somewhat less awful, I don't believe you can reliably predict that her outcome would have been much the same.

I am not convinced that "well the prison isn't as anywhere near as bad as the one in BKK" is any indication that the albeit better but still "culture shock with knobs on" conditions in Peru will automatically fully compensate for the entirely different set of circumstances. I think having a basis of "better the devil you know" is something of an advantage. SG went as far as to state she regretted being moved to British prison, despite the "on paper" improved conditions.

I don't think there is cause to believe that this is going to be the inevitable death of any kind of future for the 2 women in Peru. People can and have come through similar and gone on to rebuild their life.

But at the same time I don't see how anybody can feel reasonably sure that in the longer term it doesn't pose a significant risk of being the catalyst for a downward trajectory.

I think perhaps the 2 young women who got banged up for drug smuggling in Thalland after Sandra (I think they were in at the same time, was one of them was called Holly ? ... I'm fuzzy on the details but weren't they tourists and around the same age as the 2 in Peru? They got a royal pardon or got sent to serve their sentence back in the UK relatively quickly I think ) might provide a better "comparable example" of possible outcome. But I have no idea what happened to them. And it's hard to google when you can't even remember their names.

If I had to pick for myself between SG's circs + women's prison in BKK and the circs for the 2 in Peru + less awful prison in Peru, I'd pick Sandy's lot.

Thailand is familiar to me. Peru is not. I'd take worse conditions over the the greater fragility of my 20 year old self and a complete ignorance of language and customs that exacerbates culture shock at the best of time, let alone the worst of times. In terms of long term future/happiness survivability I think the former has the edge in terms of a better bet than the latter.

I tried to do the above using what as a parent I'd pick (if I had to) for my son. But even in the hypothetical I broke out in a cold sweat. Whatever the outcomes for the detained I have no idea how their parents get past the experience in one piece.

The case I half remembered is being compared to this one as luck would have it

This is all I can find in term of indicating how their future turned out.

"Karyn, from Solihull, married in the late 1990s. She still lives in a Birmingham suburb and has a teenage daughter."

"Patricia, from Bartley Green, also tried to rebuild her life after returning to the UK and reportedly moved to Bristol to live with family."

i was not trying to give dishonest or brutal judicial systems a pass, i obviously worded my post badly. the point i wanted to make is that if these young women are wilfully guilty of attempted drug smuggling, they have little right to sympathy because they do not come from terrible, poverty stricken backgrounds like the local or african drug mules.

If they were wilfully guilty, then I am afraid, they do need the punishment.

They are getting the punishment now, whether they are "guilty" or not.

I saw a schoolgirl yesterday with the doughnut hairdo. It looked every bit as absurd on her as it does on McCollum. She'd do we'll to get shot of it - what's the first thing someone's likely to grab hold of in a jail house fight?

And yes, innocent or guilty, I feel a bit sorry for them.

"Karyn, from Solihull, married in the late 1990s. She still lives in a Birmingham suburb and has a teenage daughter."

Hasn't it been pretty much established that Karyn Smith was pretty much the dim witted friend who knew sod all about the drugs?

Sandra Gregory wrote about Karyn in her memoirs. I'd pick a Peruvian jail over a 90s Thai one any day. Gregory wrote of dead prisoners left in the baking heat until their bodies finally exploded.

I have as much sympathy for the two women as they had for the end users, some of whom could have died, which I suspect is none.

As others have said, if they were coerced, what was to stop them speaking to the police or immigration in Ibiza, on the plane or even in Peru upon arrival.

Having a debt does not give you the right to take an action which will destroy others' lives.

Best example of mumsnet chronic overuse of the word 'entitled' I've seen for a long time!

they have little right to sympathy because they do not come from terrible, poverty stricken backgrounds like the local or african drug mules

We are in total agreement that the people that tend to be at the sharpest end of the stick are the Africans. They get 50+ year sentences in Thailand.... and serve them.

However I don't believe that sympathy, has to be so strictly rationed. You don't get given a set amount at the start of life, so there is no necessity to be parsimonious with it in case you run out.

And having sympathy doesn't automatically have to come wedded to the belief that people you have sympathy for should be exempt from all and any judicial fallout when they commit a crime.

It's entirely doable to empathise with the maelstrom of emotions they'll be at the mercy of for the timebeing, and still believe that a "slap on the wrist at the airport then sent on your way home" is not an appropriate response to serious crimes.

Jeez, on AIBU no-one can hear you scream

Carpe I didn't use SG to prove my point, as I mentioned before. The only reason I mentioned her was to say that even people who have been through hell in a thai prison can come back.

I would never pick a Thai prison over a Peruvian one, even if I spoke the local language fluently. They will be on a foreigners wing too. They will have culture shock with knobs on, I don't really see how that can be avoided.

Some people will recover from something like this, just like some people recover from all sorts of trauma and life-changing events. Others will sink into drugs or whatever escape they find. There is no way of knowing, but at this point, they have not thrown their life away.

SilverOldie. If they were coerced, how do we know that if they told the police, that another part of their gang, or their friends would not have carried out threads to kill family members?

Part of the problem is how people talk about drugs and drug dealers as if they are total strangers and not just friends of friends. Or even your own boyfriend. Or a guy you really really fancy. Basically part and parcel of your own life. And of course many drugs get through customs. That's why drugs are easy to buy. So, the person saying why don't you make a bit of easy money is someone you are relatively comfortable with? And he tells you it's easy. You may even know someone else who's done it because, s I say, there's plenty of stuff to buy.

It doesn't even have to be a gang or threats. You do it because it's all around you and you need/want the money and because you're fairly relaxed about drug taking anyway.

Of course there are teenagers who don't know any drugs, have never seen them taken, have no idea where to buy them. But there are plenty who know their way around drugs and know what a two week holiday in Thailand/Ibiza/Peru is all about.

Havung watched the footage of them very carefully I get the impression the dark haired girl is a completely different kettle of fish to the other.

What is that meant to mean?

Gregory wrote of dead prisoners left in the baking heat until their bodies finally exploded

She also wrote that she regretted transferring to a British prison, that she wished she had stayed in BKK.

She'd been in Thailand about six years by the time she was sent home I think, latterly with the culture of the women's prison becoming her norm.

So maybe familiarity is not a non issue, and maybe "on paper" better conditions are not the single relevant factor ?

didn't use SG to prove my point, as I mentioned before. The only reason I mentioned her was to say that even people who have been through hell in a thai prison can come back

Ish. You used a factually inaccurate (19 years old, young and niave) description of SG in order to create a (false) close comparison with the young women in Peru, to prove illustrate your point when irritated by posters' gloomy predictions.

Ex prisoners with a criminal record for serious crimes do often see their pre arrest prospects fizzle away. Their outcomes do tend to be worse than the norm. And your crime being committed abroad and covered by the domestic papers back home with their typical vulture like enthusiasm for picking the bones of the story clean for for years so your name/face "rings a bell" long after your release.... does not exactly help provide immunity from "future shrink".

One example of a woman's "extraordinary rather than ordinary" achievements, (whose experience was more different than it was similar to the women in Peru), doesn't magic the above away.

And to be honest I don't know how much a oxbridge degree, or having a book published really illustrates how well things turned out for somebody. It doesn't tell you if they have managed to get into a field they want to work in, have got past any CR barriers to progression. Earn enough to live comfortably. Be accepted socially for who they are now rather than what they did twenty years ago by most people, most of the time. Are content and relaxed more often than they are not. Have managed to forgive themselves for the impact it had on their loved ones. Have been able to move on live in a now that isn't overly coloured by back then.

I hope the degree and the book are just the cherries on the cake for her, because I think the cherries (while wonderful achievements) are less important than her having the cake itself.

I feel that maybe the fairer haired one was far more aware of what she was doing (not that either were fully unaware).

Havung watched the footage of them very carefully I get the impression the dark haired girl is a completely different kettle of fish to the other.

Is that a euphemism for 'dim'?

My impression from the very first video is that the Irish one is on a different planet.

No, not a euphemism for dim, though it wouldn't surprise me. I think she's more passive and more of a follower than the other. Possibly (though by no means certain) would be easier to convince that something was a good idea.

Blimey. You are reading a lot into the footage. I can't remember which one is which. There is the girl with the unfeasibly large doughnut and the blonde one. And both have names beginning with M. That's as far as I've got. And one is Scottish and one is Irish.

Blimey. You are reading a lot into the footage. I can't remember which one is which. There is the girl with the unfeasibly large doughnut and the blonde one.

I'm talking about Doughnut Heid. And you're right, I'm reading too much into it though not as much as some posters on this thread.

I retract. Perhaps the hair has unjustifiably prejudiced my thinking.

Yep, I probably am, but I'm off work and stir crazy. Also maybe a slight professional interest no, just actually bored shitless.