Abstract

VELAZQUEZ MORENO, Sara Elena  and  TREVINO RANGEL, Javier. “Their actions are abhorrent”: Women accused of Organised Crime. Rev. interdiscip. estud. género Col. Méx. [online]. 2023, vol.9, e1023.  Epub Dec 08, 2023. ISSN 2395-9185.  https://doi.org/10.24201/reg.v9i1.1023.

Between 2017 and 2021, the number of women accused of organized crime in Mexico doubled and it is now the most common crime among women serving time in federal prisons. However, a few academic studies have focused on women accused of this type of crime, and those that do exist tend to ignore the gender of the accused. And when gender is considered, the research often offers a dichotomous and superficial perspective of women, portraying them as “victims” of their respective organizations or as “perpetrators” of illegal acts who actively and voluntarily choose to participate in organized crime. This article is a preliminary study, framed within the sociology of law, that seeks to contribute to the critical analysis of this issue. It explores the scarce evidence available about 67 court rulings for 72 women accused of organized crime, in addition, statistical data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) was used. This analysis presents two main findings. First, the offence of organized crime serves as a substitute for an investigation: charges of organized crime allow women to be arrested and detained without pre-trial investigation. Second, most analyses are based on the untenable basis of the “victim”/“perpetrator” divide which to tends to over simplify women´s diverse and complex roles y in organized crime groups.

Keywords : Organized crime; war on drugs; women; justice; victims.