The growth of the drug war and rates of narco-violence in Mexico has captured the attention of the international community, leading to international debates about the validity and effectiveness of the War on Drugs mantra. Since 2006, the Mexican government has been actively combating the cartels with armed troops, leading to high rates of human rights abuses as well as growing opposition to official prohibition policies. This thesis explores three movements advocating for alternatives to the Mexican drug war that have their foundation in civil society organizations: the movements for human rights protection, for drug policy liberalization and for the protection and restitution of victims of the drug war. These movements are analysed through a theoretical framework drawing on critical political economy theory, civil society and social movement theory, and political opportunity structures. This thesis concludes that, when aligned favourably, the interplay of agency and political opportunities converge to create openings for shifting dominant norms and policies. While hegemonic structures continue to limit agency potential, strong civil society advocacy strategies complemented by strong linkages with transnational civil society networks have the potential to achieve transformative changes in the War on Drugs in Mexico.

This thesis examines AB 109, “Public Safety Realignment”, a policy enacted in California in 2011 to address the United States Supreme Court mandate to reduce overcrowding in California’s prisons to 137.5%. Realignment proactively shifted ‘non-non-non’ felons (non-serious, non-violent, non-sex crimes) from the state prison system to the county jail system and made some changes to the parole and probation systems. Though California’s prison population declined considerably in 2011 and 2012, this reduction did not last; in 2013 the prison population in California increased by 1,770 inmates, and in late 2013 the CDCR estimated that the state prison population would experience an increase of more than 10,000 inmates by 2018. Though the mandate was ultimately reached after the passage of Proposition 47 in November 2014, it is significant that Realignment, which had been seen as groundbreaking criminal justice reform, failed to make significant and lasting change in the way it was intended. This thesis suggests that Realignment failed to meet the overcrowding mandate on its own due to a mixture of misaligned incentives and prosecutorial and policing power at the county level.

This thesis examines the history of legal and illegal narcotics in the United States. This thesis explores the impact criminalizing drug use has on communities of color. The current criminal justice system seeks to correct behavior society and the law deems deviant but has not proven to be effective as shown by rates of recidivism. The present research uses a literature review to investigate how alternative dispute resolution practices and prison abolition meet the needs of the criminal justice system. The purpose of this thesis is to examine two proposed reforms: one that would abolish prison sentences except in cases where offenders pose a high risk to public safety, and another that would employ conflict resolution techniques to serve the retributive, and rehabilitative purposes of the criminal sanction. This thesis will suggest that these proposed reforms, if undertaken concurrently, will likely shrink the US prison population while advancing penal goals.

The growth of the drug war and rates of narco-violence in Mexico has captured the attention of the international community, leading to international debates about the validity and effectiveness of the War on Drugs mantra. Since 2006, the Mexican government has been actively combating the cartels with armed troops, leading to high rates of human rights abuses as well as growing opposition to official prohibition policies. This thesis explores three movements advocating for alternatives to the Mexican drug war that have their foundation in civil society organizations: the movements for human rights protection, for drug policy liberalization and for the protection and restitution of victims of the drug war. These movements are analysed through a theoretical framework drawing on critical political economy theory, civil society and social movement theory, and political opportunity structures. This thesis concludes that, when aligned favourably, the interplay of agency and political opportunities converge to create openings for shifting dominant norms and policies. While hegemonic structures continue to limit agency potential, strong civil society advocacy strategies complemented by strong linkages with transnational civil society networks have the potential to achieve transformative changes in the War on Drugs in Mexico.

This thesis explores the moral life worlds of people who have been imprisoned in Mexico, while considering how they incorporate the fate of imprisonment into the story of their lives through cognitive, discursive, sensory, affective, recollective and imaginary processes. The midst of a war on drugs in Mexico confirms that structural factors like political premises and poverty, as well as class backgrounds and racial discrimination largely determine who goes to prison. However, this research is not only confined to a structural analysis, since prisoners also explain their imprisonment in relation to other contingent encounters and coincidences occurring in their every day life. As such, imprisonment seems for prisoners like an unimagined possibility and a latent daily risk. Using a variety of ethnographic methods and modes of representation, this research sheds light on how imprisonment is related to stories of love, treason, memories and hopes. I draw from prisoners and ex-prisoners’ personal sources of expression like their writings; I recur to eliciting their memories through their objects and crafts; I pay attention to the role of the gaze in crafting identities in prison; I also draw attention to prisoners and ex-prisoners’ expressions of feelings and emotions. I argue that such sources and sensorial realms and methods offer relevant insights into their existential experiences. They are also important devices to represent stories from below. Through inmates’ narratives and practices my work offers stories, explanations and effects of incarceration alternative to the official reasons legitimating incarceration. Central to my work is my film Time will Tell that documents the lives of three ex-prisoners and represents their every day duties, and the sensory and corporeal implications of the aftermath of imprisonment. Film has been a central piece of my ethnographic research since it allows audiences to engage with realms of experience that go beyond the one offered by language and text; so as to also help evoke – and not only illustrate- the whole of the journey out of prison as an ontological and sensuous experience.

In February 2017, Tanzanian President John Magufuli publicly declared a war on drugs, an unexpected change in policy in a country previously leading the way in harm reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The war on drugs, a set of policies aimed at reducing drug supply and use through the punishment, forced treatment and criminalization of drug users, is a part of Magufuli’s strategy to ‘clean up’ Tanzanian society. Prior to his election, the Tanzanian government largely ignored treatment and drug policy, and foreign NGOs, in partnership with local activists, funded and implemented harm reduction interventions. This thesis seeks to understand a puzzling reversal from harm reduction to repression, posing the questions: 1) How did the Tanzanian government implement a war on drugs that went against the goals of a number of powerful foreign actors funding services for drug users? 2) What have been the outcomes for drug users in Tanzania as a result of the drug policies and programming implemented since the election of Magufuli? 3) How does Tanzania’s war on drugs shape international and domestic approaches to drug use and drug policy in the country? In the fall of 2018, I interviewed foreign and local NGO workers, officials from major international organizations and former drug users and activists in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Using interviews and observations during this fieldwork, I explore the realities on the ground underlying both the drug policy changes towards drug users implemented over 2016/17, and the more public crackdown on drug use in 2017. I rely on a constructivist methodology to challenge and interrogate the narratives being produced by the Tanzanian government, which echoed harsh, war on drugs ideology but also boasted about comprehensive harm reduction programming, a contradictory position I also explore in this thesis. In answer to my first research question, I argue that the Tanzanian government evaded donor pressure or interference in pursuing an anti-drug user agenda through strategies of appeasement, intimidation and the exploitation of a neglected policy area. The Tanzanian government touted its harm reduction program at the international level to produce a narrative of continued support for drug users, appeasing donors and foreign agencies while, in reality, narrowing the scope of treatment to the detriment of people who use drugs. The government also used intimidation tactics, threatening the work of foreign NGOs working with vulnerable population, which chose to stay and provide limited services rather than risk being kicked out of the country. The Tanzanian government, with limited resources, took advantage of donors’ focus on HIV/AIDS and lack of commitment to drug users, to maneuver and achieve a repressive policy agenda without interference. I build on this argument using the evidence I gathered during fieldwork to answer to my second research question. I argue that the outcomes of the Tanzanian drug war agenda were increased police harassment, higher drug prices and fear of punishment among drug users which led to riskier drug use, greater difficulty in accessing services and greater economic vulnerability. Drug users had to go farther, spend more money on drugs and face harassment as they tried to avoid dopesickness. Policy changes resulted in the closure of harm reduction centres frequented by drug users, limited access to needle exchange and limited the outreach efforts of local and international NGOs, making life much more difficult for people who use drugs. During my research, I found that, contrary to some of the literature I read which posited the war on drugs as a Western strategy of political control, the Tanzanian government was actually producing war on drugs narratives, and using these narratives to justify its repressive policies. This finding supports the answer to my third research question. I argue that the Tanzanian government produced narratives of drugs hindering development, causing corruption and threatening national unity. I also argue that donors such as the United Kingdom, and foreign agencies working in HIV/AIDS, are reproducing these narratives and are following an agenda, set by the Tanzanian government, that does not meet the needs of drug users and supports the centralization and repression of the Magufuli regime. Foreign agencies shifted from supporting drug users, to instead following an agenda that does not meet their goals in reaching drug users. Donors did not notice or prioritize the increased abuse of drug users’ human rights at all, accepting the provision of methadone as evidence of support for drug users and continuing to provide general budget support to the Tanzanian government and even providing specific funding to limit drug supply in the country. The effectiveness of Tanzania producing such narratives, and enacting the repressive policies war on drugs narratives justify, reveals global antipathy towards actually supporting people who use drugs and advancing the rights of people who use drugs. In upholding old war on drugs narratives and implementing policies that attack people who use drugs, Tanzania is contributing to an international consensus that the war on drugs is justified as long as basic treatment is provided. This thesis, using the voices of activists and advocates on the ground, deconstructs the Tanzanian war on drugs. I argue for the inclusion of those with lived experiences in shaping and changing the repressive drug policies and epistemologies that are being produced by the Tanzanian state and are being accepted by the international community.

In recent years, the people of Latin America have organized and elected political leaders traditionally excluded from their nation's established political systems. In Venezuela and Bolivia, the shifts to the left may have been the most drastic. This research will look to what extent United States Foreign Policy led to a radical restructuring in the Venezuelan and Bolivian political systems. Additionally the research will examine the effect of America' War on Drugs and other misguided policies that led to a rejection of the old era of American cooperation and in turn an embrace of a new vision. Utilizing the Dependency Theory as a framework and applying the Blowback Theory, the research synthesizes the contemporary history of the two nations and popular opinion of cooperation with the US. Specifically, research will also focus on the effect undemocratic policies have had on fostering an environment of solidarity among people to come together and link their struggles against hegemonic American policies. Cooperation with the US has often led to the adoption of market-centered economic policies that left the two countries in states of severe poverty where the only way for the people to survive was to collectively organize.

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