Criminalizing Inequality: The Narratives of Women Formerly on Death Row in the Philippines

This paper delves into the pathways to prison of women who once received the death penalty in the Philippines.  Drawing upon extensive participant observation at the only two existing women’s prisons in the country and in-depth interviews with 27 former death row inmates, I examine how the women framed the circumstances that brought them to death row, based on their understanding of their identities, relationships, and social worlds.  I analyze the link between the women’s histories of victimization, social and economic marginalization, and substance abuse problems and their crimes.  I also consider how the experience of deception and betrayal in close relationships, compounded by corruption in the criminal justice system, constituted a pathway to death row for the majority of the respondents.  I discuss the implications of their narratives for the discourse on women and crime.

The women in my study were largely in marginalized positions in their families and relationships, at work, and in society in general.  Their crimes resulted from their efforts to survive on a day-to-day basis and cope with their circumstances.  Their narratives reflect many facets and social realities of low-income and working class culture in Philippine society.  Their accounts of victimization, violence against specific men and even women and children, drug abuse and/or drug dealing in response to social and economic marginalization, cooperation with illegal activity as a result of relational responsibilities, corruption on the part of government and law enforcement agencies, and fatalism and passivity in the face of injustice, illuminate the contours and dynamics of their conflict-ridden world. My paper exposes the challenges to the dominant discourse on women’s crime, as illustrated by their narratives—as predominantly low-income women in a postcolonial, low-income nation enmeshed in poverty and institutional corruption.