Mules and Turkeys: Women in the Prison Drug Trade

• In Event: Women in Prison: Distresses, Complexities, and Strains

Abstract

Female inmates are a particularly disadvantaged group in Canada, suffering from forms of oppression and exclusion that operate along a series of different axes. These factors regularly combine to contribute to their criminalization and incarceration. Our interviews with 60 female inmates in Canadian provincial prisons suggest that a subset of these women also demonstrate a good deal of agency in one of the few opportunity structures available to them: the prison drug trade. We build upon Sveinung Sandberg’s concept of ‘street capital,’ to detail the different roles women play in the prison drug trade, and how they are (sometimes) able to become successful in this male dominated economy through smuggling drugs into prison and helping to move drugs across different units.

Authors

• David Dunford, University of Alberta

• Kevin D. Haggerty, University of Alberta