The 37 Jamaicans, the US Government, deported recently threatened to sue the US Federal Bureau of Prisons for inhumane conditions behind bars.
Joy Thorpe, a 55-year-old cosmetologist/drug mule from Orange district, St James, whom the authorities caught trafficking a half kilo of cocaine at the John F Kennedy Airport in New York in 2020, complained that officers trampled upon her human rights at the Aliceville Federal Correctional Institution in Alabama.
She calls for urgent US criminal justice system reform and better treatment for non-immigrants.
Her husband, traveling with her when she was held, received one year and one-day sentencing for the crime, while Thorpe served 22 months.
Almost a month back on the island, she takes full responsibility for trafficking the illegal substance. But she questions the length of her sentence and the inhumane treatment she received while incarcerated.
Watch a convicted drug mule tell Gleaner her story
“I was in hell. I went into a state of depression, and I want Jamaicans to know that prison is a serious place to be and the type of cruelty they have in America, we Jamaicans don’t have it here, much as some people sleep on the ground here,” Thorpe told The Sunday Gleaner last week.
Joy Thorpe, convicted drug mule