Policy talk on "Breaking the Sentence: Women, Drug Policy, Incarceration and Paths to Reform in Latin America"
Breaking the Sentence: CEU Policy Talk Brings Together Latin American Researchers and Advocates to Examine Drug Policy and Women's Incarceration
Vienna, Austria — On 11 March 2026, the Shattuck Center for Human Rights at the Central European University (CEU) co-hosted a Policy Talk titled "Breaking the Sentence: Women, Drug Policy, Incarceration and Paths to Reform in Latin America" in partnership with the Women, Drug Policy and Incarceration Working Group. The event brought together researchers, civil society advocates and women with lived experience of incarceration from Colombia, Mexico and Argentina to present new findings on the gendered impacts of organised crime prosecution policies and to discuss innovative alternatives to incarceration. The event took place during the week of the 69th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), held in Vienna.
The panel drew on over a decade of research and advocacy led by the Working Group on Women, Drug Policies and Incarceration — originally established in 2014 by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) and the Colombian NGO Dejusticia, and since expanded to include organisations of formerly incarcerated women and family members. Between 35% and 70% of incarcerated women in Latin America are behind bars for a drug offence — a rate consistently and significantly higher than for men — yet evidence of the effectiveness of these policies in reducing drug markets remains inconclusive.
Panellists presented findings from country-level research conducted in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico as part of a project led by the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) and funded by UN Women. Across all three contexts, the research documented a consistent pattern: women involved in organised crime overwhelmingly occupy low-level, precarious and easily replaceable roles — such as drug transportation or low-level sales — driven not solely by poverty but by the intersection of structural inequality, gender-based violence, precarious labour markets and social networks.
Geras Contreras (Universidad de los Andes/CELS) highlighted that current drug control and organised crime prosecution frameworks are based on reductionist assumptions, including the equation of family structures with criminal ones, and the prioritisation of arrests in flagrante over criminal investigation. These frameworks target low-level actors — disproportionately women — while higher levels of criminal structures remain largely beyond prosecutorial reach.
Macarena Fernández Hofmann (CELS, Argentina) documented that Argentina's prison population has risen by over 75% in the last decade, with 25% of incarcerated women charged with non-violent drug offences. Special security regimes introduced under the justification of combating organised crime — including near-total isolation and restrictions on contact with the outside world — function in practice as forms of cruel treatment that fall hardest on women in vulnerable situations.
Renata Demichelis (Elementa DDHH, Mexico) presented research documenting the complex circumstances that shape women's pathways into criminalisation in Mexico, including coercion, economic vulnerability and expansive judicial interpretations of organised crime charges. She noted that Mexico's 2020 Amnesty Law, while limited in scope, demonstrated that corrective mechanisms are possible: 394 individuals have regained their freedom under the law, 98% of them for drug-related offences, and 84% were formally recognised as having acted under conditions of poverty or vulnerability.
Claudia Cardona (Mujeres Libres, Colombia) underscored that approximately six out of ten women captured, charged or incarcerated in Colombia between 2020 and 2025 are linked to crimes associated with organised crime, including drug trafficking, extortion and arms trafficking. She stressed that the broad and ambiguous definition of organised criminality allows legal systems to treat low-level participants with the same severity as criminal leaders, and that formerly incarcerated women face compounding barriers to social reintegration — including absence of employment opportunities, financial exclusion, lack of psychosocial support, and persistent stigma that crosses national borders.
"One thing is to have committed a crime. Another thing is to stop being a human being."
— Claudia Cardona, Director, Mujeres Libres
Isabel Pereira-Arana (Dejusticia, Colombia) presented findings on the implementation of Colombia's Public Utility Law (2023), a landmark legislation that allows female heads of household convicted of drug offences to serve their sentences through community service in freedom. Despite an estimated 5,000 potential beneficiaries, official data shows that only 237 women have accessed the benefit to date, with Bogotá's largest women's prison — housing approximately 1,500 women — having granted the benefit to only 16 women. Pereira-Arana identified significant implementation barriers, including restrictive judicial interpretations of vulnerability and head-of-household status, incomplete application processes, and a framing of the law as a "restorative justice" mechanism that places moral guilt on women rather than acknowledging the structural conditions that led to their criminalisation.
"The question should not be how to restore the damage women caused. The question is: how can we restore the harms caused by incarceration — to women, to their families and to their life trajectories?"
— Isabel Pereira-Arana, Senior Drug Policy Coordinator, Dejusticia
Marie Nougier (IDPC) reflected on the Working Group's evolution over twelve years, highlighting several key lessons. Foremost among these is the principle of "nothing about us, without us": the meaningful participation of formerly incarcerated women and their family members proved essential not only to refining the group's advocacy priorities, but also to challenging preconceived reform proposals — including assumptions about the desirability of house arrest. Nougier also noted the importance of combining quantitative data with lived-experience testimony to shift narratives, while carefully protecting women from additional stigma.
The panel acknowledged a sobering reality: despite a decade of research and advocacy, the overall number of women incarcerated for drug offences in Latin America has not decreased. Panellists pointed to a shifting geopolitical environment characterised by securitisation, militarisation and a narrowing of civic space as significant structural obstacles to meaningful reform.
About the Organizers
The Shattuck Center for Human Rights at Central European University advances interdisciplinary research and dialogue on human rights challenges globally. The Women, Drug Policy and Incarceration Working Group, led by WOLA, IDPC and Dejusticia, has been at the forefront of research and advocacy on the gendered impacts of drug policies in Latin America since 2014.
For further information, please contact:
Rebeca Marques Rocha
Junior Visiting Researcher | Shattuck Center for Human Rights & Department of Public Policy
Central European University, Vienna
Marques-RochaR@ceu.edu