Women, Drugs and the Death Penalty: Framing Sandiford
| Author | LIZZIE SEAL,JENNIFER FLEETWOOD |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12215 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
The Howard Journal Vol56 No 3. September 2017 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12215
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 358–381
Women, Drugs
and the Death Penalty: Framing
Sandiford
JENNIFER FLEETWOOD and LIZZIE SEAL
Jennifer Fleetwood is Lecturer in Criminology, Goldsmiths, University of
London; Lizzie Seal is Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Sussex
Abstract: This article examines the impact and significance of women subject to capital
punishment for drug offences. Women are subject to the death penalty for drug offences;
wherever data are available they describe low-level offenders, primarily drug mules.
Sandiford’s death sentence prompts widespread discussion about her, her culpability and
the appropriateness of her punishment drawing on drug war discourse, and death penalty
tropes. Framinganalysis reveals the powerful and persistent nature of gendered binaries.
The use of capital punishment against female mules troubles the gendered binaries that
underpin US-led drug war discourse, and highlights the death penalty as a gendered
punishment.
Keywords: death penalty; drug mules; drug offences; women
Worldwide, women comprise around 30% of drug-trafficking arrests (UN
Commission on Narcotic Drugs 2011), usually for low-level involvement,
including as drug couriers/mules.1Drug trafficking is subject to a manda-
tory death penalty in ten countries, and resulted in an estimated 600
executions worldwide in 2014 (Gallahue and Lines 2015). This article is
the first to examine the intersection between women’s criminalisation for
drug offences and the international use of the death penalty for these
offences. Consistent with the precepts of feminist criminology we explore
the gendered nature of punishment (Belknap 2015; Carlen 2002; Malloch
and McIvor 2013) and make women visible by gathering the scant data
on women sentenced to death for drug offences in relation to the ‘war
on drugs’. This ‘war’ has been profoundly gendered, both in terms of
the discursive meanings produced, and in its impact on criminal justice.
In addition to demonstrating that women receive capital punishment for
drug offences, we also explore their discursive significance. Here we fulfil
a further aim of feminist criminology: to deconstruct gendered meaning in
relation to women’s offending and punishment (inter alia, Maidment 2006;
Naffine 1997; O’Neill and Seal 2012; Seal 2010). A global level analysis
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2017 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol56 No 3. September 2017
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 358–381
of discourse is neither possible, nor desirable, since it would obscure the
importance of nationality. To this end, we focus on the UK and offer a
framing analysis of Mail Online’s coverage as it relates to the case of Lindsay
Sandiford, a 56-year-old British woman arrested and charged with drug
trafficking in 2012 after 4.8 kilos of cocaine were found in her suitcase
when she arrived at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Indonesia.
Sandiford is simultaneously exceptional, in being a Western white woman
on death row for drug smuggling, and unexceptional in being a foreign
national sentenced to death in Indonesia for this crime, where over half
of those on death row are drug offenders. Sandiford is the first British
woman to be given a death sentence for drug trafficking, although others
have been subject to the death penalty overseas, including Linda Carty
in the USA. Twenty-two Britons are currently on death row abroad,
including ten convicted of drug offences (Perring 2015); a small fraction
of the hundreds of Britons arrested overseas annually for drug offences.2
As a woman, Sandiford has received a greater degree of news coverage
since she was arrested, in comparison with British men arrested for drug
offences overseas. By combining empirical and discursive analyses, we
explore the significance of gender for capital punishment.
First, this article offers a brief overview of drug war discourses and
illustrates the ways in which they are underpinned by gendered binaries.
Next, we examine the global use of the death penalty for drug offences,
examining its subjects and, in particular, women. Third, in the second half
of the article, we analyse the framing of Lindsay Sandiford’s case as a way
of examining the gendered meanings that continue to underpin both the
death penalty and the war on drugs.
Drug War Discourse and the Death Penalty
Discourses do not cause punishment, per se, but they play a vital role in
justifying and legitimising those who can be punished and the nature and
extent of their punishment. United Nations International Drug Control
Conventions3are the foundation of a global approach to drugs. The United
Nations Conventions establish, globally, the notion of drugs and traffickers
as a ‘threat’ and as ‘evil’, rather than a matter of health requiring regulation,
for example (Crick 2012). International conventions (and their supporting
discourses) are incorporated into national laws and policy reflecting distinct
legal systems, culture and history (Bancroft 2009). However, as a power-
ful first world nation, the USA has played a significant role in defining
the drug problem, including through the United Nations (Crick 2012),
as well as international aid (Corva 2008). Although the USA is increas-
ingly departing from the metaphor of a ‘war’, this discourse is remarkably
persistent.
The contemporary use of the death penalty for drug offences arguably
owes much to President Nixon’s declaration of the ‘war on drugs’ in the
USA in 1971 (Green 1998). The metaphor of a war relies on a ‘binary logic
of representation’: ‘Oppositional terms (man/woman, white/black, ratio-
nal/irrational, mind/body and so on) are constructed in a system of value
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2017 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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