The “War on Drugs” in Philippine Criminal Courts: Legal Professionals’ Moral Discourse and Plea Bargaining in Drug-Related Cases

Meyer, Emílio Peluso Neder; Machado, Marta R. de Assis

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-17918-1_11

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…These discourses have as yet to openly challenge the WOD but arise from EJKs' dissonance with people's sense of social justice, physical security of their families or religious belief in the value of life. Or is it key, rather, to delink morality from politics (Ciocchini & Lamchek, 2023)? That is, to challenge the moralistic chastisement of the poor's corrupt lifestyles as a distraction from the need to engage in political contests over material redistribution.…”

Section: Wod As Moral Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The descriptive strand of scholarship built a body of empirical observations and evidence of the WOD's intended and unintended consequences that are useful for its critical evaluation. Scholars sought to account for the WOD's impact on: young users' drug use (Lasco, 2018) (arguing the WOD has not made users so fearful as to stop them completely from using drugs and highlighting tactics they employ to evade police and continue drug use); the crime rate in the National Capital Region (Alagabia Jr. and Cawi, 2019) (suggesting the WOD had no clear impact on the crime rate); illicit economic activities and state and community corruption (Lara, Jr and De La Rosa, 2020) (suggesting WOD did not end shadow economies and its complex links to state and non‐state actors); persons accused of drug‐related crimes in trial courts (Ciocchini & Lamchek, 2023) (arguing that plea‐bargaining results in incarceration or forced rehabilitation based on moralistic perceptions of the poor by judicial actors); orphaned children (Ofreneo et al., 2022); and struggles against overlapping problems such as by poor Moro women (Jopson & Sakaran, 2020).…”

Section: Accounting For the Actual Consequences Of The Wodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comparative studies further shed light on the uneven implementation of the policy in localities (Ravanilla et al., 2022; Tusalem, 2019), suggesting that local authorities and governments play a mediating role in the enactment of killings (Kreuzer, 2017). Apart from the community, another significant front in the WOD are the criminal courts: the WOD resulted in the deluge of drug‐related cases which judicial authorities resolved through plea bargaining (Ciocchini & Lamchek, 2023).…”

Section: Accounting For the Actual Consequences Of The Wodmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Confronting the Philippines' war on drugs: A literature review

Lamchek,

Jopson

2024

Sociology Compass

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Upon election in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte launched one of the world's most lethal and aggressive anti‐drug campaigns known as the War on Drugs in the Philippines. The War on Drugs unleashed an unprecedented level of violence while enjoying high public approval in the Philippines throughout Duterte's presidency. Scholars from a variety of disciplines grappled with understanding the significance and impact of the War on Drugs, generating a substantial literature. How have scholars contributed to critical understanding and practice that confront the Philippines' War on Drugs? We analyse and assess the state of the scholarship on the Philippines' War on Drugs by reviewing 140 scholarly materials. We find that scholars contextualized the popularity of violence, documented its various actual effects on Philippine society, and to a lesser extent, offered alternatives. Our literature review synthesises two major analytical approaches explaining the drug war: as penal populism and as moral politics. Scholars describe the War on Drugs as a way of governing society through violence and with impunity for extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses, using legitimising moral discourses. We present key findings on the drug war's actual consequences, underscoring its catastrophic impact across various communities except the drug trade itself. Throughout, we offer reflections on blind spots, highlighting the value of considering the historical context and deeper structural and political‐economic drivers. We arrive at a research agenda intended to aid scholars in engaging with the persistent issues in the War on Drugs as it continues to be implemented by the Philippine government.

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Section: Wod As Moral Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accounting For the Actual Consequences Of The Wodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accounting For the Actual Consequences Of The Wodmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Confronting the Philippines' war on drugs: A literature review

Lamchek,

Jopson

2024

Sociology Compass

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The neocolonial logics underpinning the “war on drugs” in the Philippines

Ciocchini

2024

Oñati Socio-Legal Series

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The “war on drugs” in the Philippines has claimed thousands of people lives and has resulted in the detention of hundreds of thousands of drug users. Legal professionals working in criminal courts have adopted a “punitive paternalism” when dealing with these cases that presented plea bargaining, even in cases based on planted evidence, as helping defendants to change their life habits. The article argues that both the “war on drugs” and the “punitive paternalism” are rooted in the neoliberal policies imposed on the Philippines for decades responsible for reproducing gross income inequality and promoting a narrative blaming individuals for their own economic marginalisation. The analysis shows that the deployment of coercive strategies, such as the “war on drugs”, is still dependant on building consent, in the Gramscian sense. The article shows legal professionals’ contribution to the constitution of a hegemonic order in a context of widespread state-sponsored violence. La “guerra contra las drogas” en Filipinas se ha cobrado la vida de miles de personas y ha resultado en la detención de cientos de miles de consumidores de drogas. Los profesionales del derecho que trabajan en tribunales penales han adoptado un “paternalismo punitivo” al abordar estos casos en los que la negociación de culpabilidad, incluso en casos basados en pruebas plantadas, se presentaba como una ayuda a los acusados para cambiar sus hábitos de vida. El artículo sostiene que tanto la “guerra contra las drogas” como el “paternalismo punitivo” tienen sus raíces en las políticas neoliberales impuestas a Filipinas durante décadas, responsables de reproducir la enorme desigualdad de ingresos y promover una narrativa que culpa a los individuos por su propia marginación económica. El análisis muestra que el despliegue de estrategias coercitivas, como la “guerra contra las drogas”, todavía depende de la construcción del consentimiento, en el sentido gramsciano. El artículo evidencia la contribución de los profesionales del derecho a la constitución de un orden hegemónico en un contexto de violencia generalizada patrocinada por el Estado.

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The “War on Drugs” in Philippine Criminal Courts: Legal Professionals’ Moral Discourse and Plea Bargaining in Drug-Related Cases

Cited by 2 publications

References 11 publications

Confronting the Philippines' war on drugs: A literature review

Confronting the Philippines' war on drugs: A literature review

The neocolonial logics underpinning the “war on drugs” in the Philippines

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