The topic of drug mules frequently attracts curiosity and revulsion in popular culture and mainstream media; particularly with regards to the archetypal female drug mule who is exploited or coerced into ingesting pellets of drugs and carrying them across international borders. However, to date limited academic attention has been given to this issue. How or why people (and more importantly women) become a drug mule and the roles of gender, structure and agency in this trade have thus remained largely unexplored.
The book, Drug mules: Women in the international cocaine trade, written by UK criminologist, Dr Jennifer Fleetwood, thus serves as an important and unique contribution into these issues. The book draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted over five years in prisons in Ecuador as well as in depth interviews with 31 people imprisoned for drug trafficking offences. Although the core aim of the book is to challenge the stated or implicit discourse that female mules are victims, something it does well through combining discursive and narrative approaches, it goes much further into this issue. Topics include how female drug mules talk about their drug trafficking, their motives for becoming a mule, and what being a drug mule actually entails: including the steps taken before and after leaving home, their powers (or lack thereof) in negotiating travel and trafficking arrangements and their ability to back out. Importantly, although the focus of the book throughout is on female drug mules, Dr Fleetwood includes counter-examples of male drug mules and accounts of recruiters and managers; all of which help to further disentangle the roles of gender versus the specific motives and activities of being a drug mule.
The book is both challenging and engaging, particularly due to the inclusion of detailed accounts from the imprisoned women. It carries important reminders for the drug and alcohol field. First, it reminds us that counter to dominant assumptions, there are many more male mules than female mules in the international drug trade. Second, it highlights how the criminal justice system and traditional gender models reinforce narratives of victimhood about female drug mules and that this can intentionally or unintentionally silence counter narratives and make it hard for researchers or other stakeholders to obtain more nuanced views. Third, it makes manifest that the methods for being a mule are diverse, with ingesting drugs being a minority activity.
However, undoubtedly the most important contribution of this book is critically examining the rationales for and pathways by which people (women in particular) become a drug mule. Dr Fleetwood contends that counter to the dominant accounts, deliberate coercion, threats or deception of female mules into the trade is the exception, not the rule. Indeed, a striking finding was that this view was strongly supported by both recruiters and female mules. For example, recruiters emphasised that they did not target women specifically for this role. More generally, deliberate coercion of mules (whether men or women) was deemed a high risk (and rarely utilised) strategy that would increase the likelihood that the mules would be fearful and hence attract unwanted law enforcement attention. Female drug mules further argued that they entered the trade for reasons that were largely opportunistic, including for fun/escape/travel, for the thrill, as a strategic decision to get ahead (such as to be able to buy a house), or as a means to help their loved ones, such as to cover the family medical bills. Further supporting this was that some of the female mules were very well educated and travelled. That said, the book also showed that female drug mules tended to enter mule work in a context that involved structural disadvantage or limited financial stability as well as via networks of trust and sometimes unequal relationships (such as boyfriends and husbands).
Perhaps unsurprisingly the book illustrates how, regardless of how mules get into the trade, most have a distinct lack of control over the activity of being a mule, including: dates/times for departure/return, whether they are allowed to go out in the foreign country or required to stay in a specific hotel, what drugs and quantities are carried and how drugs are carried (body versus luggage, etc.). All such factors reduce their capacity to mitigate risks of the trade. Importantly, the book also shows that the lack of agency involved in being a mule is true for both female and male mules, albeit with one potentially significant exception: namely that due to their social capital (links with friends or boyfriends in the trade) women may be more inclined than men to influence the processes of being a mule (such as the specific method for carrying the drugs). This suggests that female mules may (under albeit rare circumstances) be more able than their male counterparts to mitigate the risks of being in the mule trade. Added to the other examples and insights, this further illustrates that agency, structure and gender are far more changeable and situational than traditional accounts of mules would suggest.
Given the traditional inattention to the issues canvassed, Drug mules: Women in the international cocaine trade, should be regarded as essential reading for the alcohol and other drug field. This book is an important reminder that the drug trade and trade involving mules in particular is gendered but not necessarily in the ways popularly imagined (e.g. agent versus victim). The book further highlights the need for increased attention to the role of gender in other drug trafficking research and the importance of questioning dominant accounts of the how and why of trafficking in the international drug trade, including where possible through ethnographic research. Perhaps, most importantly it is a reminder of the human costs for mules who are caught, and how traditional criminal justice approaches of increasing penalties and sentences towards mules remain ill-suited to reducing the likelihood of people becoming drug mules.
Dr Caitlin Hughes
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
E-mail: [email protected]