Rethinking the Relationship between Women, Crime and Economic Factors: The Case-Study of Women Sentenced to Death for Drug Trafficking in Malaysia
Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UL, UK
Laws 2021, 10(1), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10010009
Received: 23 December 2020
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Revised: 23 January 2021
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Accepted: 28 January 2021
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Published: 31 January 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Criminology and Criminal Justice)
This paper draws upon my doctoral research into the experiences of women who have been sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Malaysia. I utilise this case-study as a lens through which to examine the relationship between women, crime and economic factors. From my data derived from 47 ‘elite’ interviews, as well as legal and media database searches (resulting in information on 146 cases), I argue that current feminist criminological theorising should be updated to incorporate the relationship between women’s crime and precarious work. As I show, precarity is gendered and disproportionately affects women from the global south. Overall, I find that many of the women who have been sentenced to death in Malaysia were engaged in precarious work and drug trafficking was a way to make ‘quick money’ to address economic insecurity. Clearly, capital punishment is incommensurate with the crime.
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Keywords:
gender; death penalty; drug trafficking; southern criminology
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
MDPI and ACS Style
Harry, L. Rethinking the Relationship between Women, Crime and Economic Factors: The Case-Study of Women Sentenced to Death for Drug Trafficking in Malaysia. Laws 2021, 10, 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10010009
AMA Style
Harry L. Rethinking the Relationship between Women, Crime and Economic Factors: The Case-Study of Women Sentenced to Death for Drug Trafficking in Malaysia. Laws. 2021; 10(1):9. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10010009
Chicago/Turabian StyleHarry, Lucy. 2021. "Rethinking the Relationship between Women, Crime and Economic Factors: The Case-Study of Women Sentenced to Death for Drug Trafficking in Malaysia" Laws 10, no. 1: 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10010009
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