Five kilos: Penalties and practice in the international cocaine trade

Current and proposed sentence guidelines for drug-trafficking offences in the United Kingdom are underpinned by the neo-liberal 'commonsense' assumption that greater quantities will yield a greater profit, which deserves greater punishment. At present, this is achieved through the use of weight to determine the maximum sentence available (five kilos for Class A drugs). Drawing on ethnographic research with drug traffickers imprisoned in Ecuador, this paper problematizes the use of weight as a measure of seriousness. This research finds that mules often carry greater quantities than professional traffickers and that therefore sentence guidelines premised on weight will punish mules disproportionately.