Mapping the Political Economy of Drugs and the Death Penalty in Southeast Asia

联合国的数据显示，整个东南亚地区的毒品生产和贩运急剧增加。各国以“毒品战争”作为回应，承诺将刑事司法解决方案置于卫生措施之上。虽然有些国家对贩毒者实行“法外处决”，但大多数国家增加了司法死刑判决。它们主张拥有决定哪些罪行在其社区内造成最严重伤害和适当惩罚的主权，声称对毒品犯罪判处死刑并不违反国际法。他们声称，被判处死刑的人犯下了令人发指的毒品罪行，公众要求判处死刑以制止毒品犯罪，鉴于最近毒品贩运活动的增加与日益严厉的刑事反应同时发生，这种说法站不住脚。我们的研究将检验这些假设的真实性，并为我们正在进行的东南亚研究项目做出重大贡献，包括最近对公众和“精英”意见的研究（Hoyle, 2021a,b）。我们的研究将挑战死刑的效力以及对毒品犯罪保留死刑的理由，同时在该地区发展关于死刑的学术研究。为了更好地了解国家对毒品犯罪的反应，并有助于刑法权力的更广泛的理论化，该项目旨在收集定性和定量数据，了解东南亚司法管辖区对毒品犯罪的刑事司法反应如何受到历史和当代权力关系，政治和文化的影响。它将收集原始数据以及法定和民间社会机构持有的信息，绘制出因毒品犯罪而被判处死刑的人——包括他们的种族、性别、社会经济地位和公民身份——以及原因。我们将以印度尼西亚为东南亚的案例研究，采访监狱中的毒品罪犯和社区中毒品犯罪网络的一部分，探讨毒品相关犯罪的动机，考虑导致一些人犯下严重毒品罪行而另一些人抵制的背景，情境和相互作用因素。在此过程中，我们将评估死刑能在多大程度上震慑潜在的毒品犯罪者。这项关于威慑的创新研究将把理论、方法和地理焦点从美国转移开来，并在南半球发展有关刑罚权力和惩罚制度的学术研究。我们的研究成果将通过各种媒体广泛传播。我们将继续发展与东南亚，特别是印度尼西亚的专业人士和我们研究的用户的富有成效的关系。我们将制定与这些关系相适应的传播战略，使相关利益攸关方参与持续对话，并在当地学术界中建立能力。虽然整个项目期间的一些讲习班和研讨会将“不公开”，以管理敏感性，但大多数传播将面向广泛的受众，包括该区域的学者，以最大限度地提高认识并促进对话。国际人权法迄今未能充分质疑东南亚保留和执行死刑的问题。强有力的理论和实证研究，识别和面对区域基本原理的界限，并确定转移话语的手段，可以改变政策和实践。在我们过去利用我们的经验和理论工作的地方，我们已经实现了变革，最近的一次是PI和Co-I向塞拉利昂政府提交的书面报告，导致那里废除了死刑，我们目前正在圭亚那利用我们的研究对死刑提出宪法挑战。亚洲的这些和其他努力表明，优秀的学术研究有潜力为政策和实践提供信息，并在有效利用学术研究产生影响时确保法律变革。我们的工作将协助本地学者和伙伴非政府组织进行这些努力。

UN data shows soaring production and trafficking of drugs across Southeast Asia. States have responded with a 'war on drugs', committing to criminal justice solutions over health measures. While some have used 'extrajudicial executions' of drug traffickers, most have increased judicial death sentences. They assert their sovereign right to determine which offences cause most serious harms within their communities and the appropriate punishments, claiming that capital punishment for drug crimes does not breach international law. They claim that those sentenced to death committed heinous drug offences and the public demands capital punishment to deter drug offending, claims that are tenuous given the recent rise in drug trafficking occurred concurrently with increasingly harsh penal responses. Our research will test the veracity of these assumptions and make a major contribution to our ongoing programme of research in Southeast Asia, including recent studies on public and 'elite' opinions (Hoyle, 2021a,b). Our research will challenge the efficacy of the death penalty, and rationales for retention for drug crimes, while developing scholarship on capital punishment in the region. To better understand states' responses to drug offences, and contribute to the wider theorization of penal power, the project aims to gather qualitative and quantitative data on how Southeast Asian jurisdictions' criminal justice responses to drug offending are shaped by historical and contemporary power relations, politics and culture. Collecting original data alongside information held by statutory and civil society bodies, it will map who is sentenced to death for drug offences - including their race, gender, socio-economic status and citizenship-and why. Focusing on Indonesia as a case study for Southeast Asia, interviewing drug offenders in prison and those in the community who are part of a drug crime network, we will explore the motivations for drug-related crime, considering contextual, situational and interactional factors that led some to commit serious drug offences while others resisted. In so doing, we will assess the extent to which the death penalty can deter potential drug offenders. This innovative research on deterrence will shift the theoretical, methodological and geographical focus away from the US, and develop scholarship on penal power and punishment regimes in the global south. Our research findings will be widely disseminated through a variety of media. We will continue to develop our productive relationships with professionals and users of our research across Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. We will build a dissemination strategy attuned to these relationships, bringing relevant stakeholders into an ongoing dialogue, and building capacity among local academics. While some workshops and seminars throughout the project will be 'closed', to manage sensitivities, most dissemination will reach wide audiences, including scholars in the region, to achieve maximum awareness and to foster dialogue.International human rights law has so far failed adequately to challenge the retention and administration of the death penalty in Southeast Asia. Robust theoretical and empirical research that identifies and confronts the boundaries of regional rationales and identifies means of shifting the discourse could change policy and practice. Where we have drawn on our empirical and theoretical work in the past, we have realised change, most recently in the PI and Co-I's written submissions to the government of Sierra Leone which resulted in abolition of the death penalty there, and we are currently using our research in a constitutional challenge to the death penalty in Guyana. These and other efforts in Asia demonstrate the potential for excellent academic research to inform policy and practice and to secure legal change when it is effectively harnessed for impact. Our work will assist local academics and partner NGOs in these efforts.