Kavelle Anglin-Christie, Staff Reporter
THERE HAS BEEN a decrease in drug trafficking by Jamaican women to the United Kingdom.
So says Sanya Ellis, a representative of Hibiscus, a non-government organisation, which has been helping women incarcerated in the U.K. for drug trafficking, to get shorter prison terms and assist their families while they are incarcerated.
Ellis says this is because those involved in the drug trade have started targeting countries like Trinidad and Nigeria.
According to statistics provided by the British High Commission, in June 2002 there were 507 Jamaican women incarcerated in the country. In June 2003, there were 423; in September 2003, there were 369; in January 2004, there were 314; in March 2004, there were 306 and in March 2005, there were approximately 190 women.
* Sandra, 41, is one of them. For £5,000, she swallowed 120 pellets of crack cocaine to give her family a better life. Sandra was convicted of drug trafficking four years ago. She had been employed as a domestic helper for 15 years but lost her job and could not find another.
"I was out of a job for nine months and a guy who was living around my area came to me and asked me if I wanted to go to England, and I said no," she said.
Sandra says her mother deserted her when she was a child and she could not bear to do the same thing to her children. She had four children who were 17, 12, nine and seven years at the time.
"But then when I see time getting so hard, and I still couldn't get any job and the guy came back telling me that I would get to finish my house and take care of my children and things like that ..." she said.
Sandra explained that she and her family were living in a board house in Mountain View for many years and she desperately wanted to either leave the area or have a concrete structure. "You see, when the whole heap of shot them a fire in the area, it easier for the shot to come through the board and kill you. Every time shot ah fire, me haffi deh run go to other people house ... I could not take it anymore," she said.
She eventually gave in. "The guy wanted me to swallow more, but I only swallowed 120 of them," she said, adding that the man, after giving her limited details, booked the flight to Heathrow, England. "I don't know why I did it, because now I realise it was a dangerous thing."
She was caught while exiting the airport. Sandra was one of 329 Jamaican women imprisoned in the United Kingdom in 2001 - a large percentage of whom were there for drug trafficking.
DAMNING EVIDENCE
She says another girl, who was carrying drugs for the same man, was also caught. "The girl had an envelope that the tickets came in and there was a piece of paper in there with my name and other information," she said. "When I reach the gate, a man come up to me and ask if ah me name Sandra so and so, and I say 'Yes'. Then is from there so them carry me into the holding area and ask me if I know the girl and I tell them 'No.'"
Sandra says the officer then showed her the letter and she admitted that she knew the girl. She was taken into custody and reality only set in when she met a man who was in the cell next to hers. He too had been arrested for drug trafficking.
"One afternoon I woke up and I noticed that I didn't see the man. When I asked the guard where the man was, him tell me that the man got sick and they rushed him to the hospital and he died there. Them say the drugs burst in him, and he died ... That was when I realise how serious it was," she said.
Sandra was sentenced to four years imprisonment. After she wrote a letter to the RM, she served two years and is now out on parole.
"All now the house deh dere and the wall don't finish ... I really want to leave there," said Sandra.
*Name changed upon request.
Do
you have a problem? Is something bothering
you? Write to