This program's alright. But what I do find a little dim is that, more often than not, the people who are knowingly doing things illegal are represented as the victims, and the people who get them behind bars are shown as thugs of some kind.
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I cant stand it when people have a black and white view of the law (and of life in general). You know, the people who reason that, "all laws are completely fair and anyone who breaks them is just a worthless criminal."
People make mistakes and dumb decisions. Just because these peoples dumb decisions included drugs does not mean they should be considered criminal scum. Some people hear the word "drugs" and automatically think of gang members riding around with AK 47's terrorizing the neighborhood.
Some people use the laughable reasoning that "drugs are getting sold to CHILDREN and KILLING THEM!!!" yeah, because drug dealers are hanging around elementary schools, selling 4th graders crack and pre-teen girls are snorting blow and shooting up heroin at their slumber parties. NOT. They are actually far more likely to be trying the alcohol that they swiped from their parents liquor cabinets, so why isn't the Anti-Drug Protect the Childrren crowd getting all riled up about booze? why are they ignoring that REAL issue and instead making up imaginary Evil Bad Drug Dealers who are all supposedly all selling hard drugs to little kids like crazy?
As several posters have already pointed out, the people shown here aren't your typical career criminal. Most of the time, they're young, naive inexperienced and compulsive. I'm pretty sure that each episode these people absolutely learned their lesson and haven't or will not repeat what they did.
They also go into how being imprisoned shamed not only themselves but their family. So I can empathize not only for the perps but also their families.
We all do stupid things in our lifetime but the key is obviously to learn from those mistakes and not repeat them, which these people did.
It's not whether you think that drugs should be legal or not. It's that these privileged soft white kids from US and UK think that they can do what they like, wherever they like.
They love the thrill of being in a foreign land, but somehow don't think that they're subject to the laws of that land. They get caught, and I don't really have much sympathy.
I like the program alright, but I wish it would focus more on the prison aspect. I'm not all that interested in the innocence or guilt, or the circumstances that brought the folks prison. What I really want to see is the details of daily life in a third world prison. Often times, the show is more than half over before person featured even gets into prison.
shareBut they are victims of their own greed,ignorance and in some cases wrong circumstances. I think they are trying to show how much they regret the choices they made. So there are some lessons we should learn :say no to smuggling drugs, respect and inform yourself about the countries you visit, make sure someone always knows where the hell you are and always keep your passport and/or copies of it with you. Oh ... and no exotic vacation is worth a stay in prison.
And more than this, many of the people that wind up in prison regret their actions, the only difference is in this show you get to see the effects their actions had on their and their families lives. Let's be honest, if most of us read/heard that a man/woman was caught with 8-10 kilos of pure cocaine and sentenced to 8 years, we would not think twice about it, no matter in which country they would be.
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe "A dream within a dream"
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Having lived in many countries around the world, both 1st and 3rd world, I can tell you that the 3rd world countries don't have the money to imprison people and try to rehabilitate them. They believe that prison is punishment, not for rehabilitation. The average cost for food, clothing, housing, medical, etc in the USA for a prisoner is about $50,000 per year. In the 3rd world, the cost is considerably less and there are few, if any, creature comforts. Many 3rd world governments work with the US embassies to repatriate the convicts to the US to spare themselves the burden of paying for their incarceration. Countries like India, Thailand, etc, spend more on education than prisons. The US is the opposite.
Personally, I have no sympathy for the people that break the law and are not under duress but only doing it for the money. They try to act like they are sorry but, what they are most sorry about is getting caught. If anyone plans to smuggle drugs in another country, they should spend a few minutes researching what will happen if they get caught. When I arrived in Taiwan a few years ago, the sign that greets you at the airport say "Welcome to Taiwan, drug smugglers will be executed".
As the theme to Baretta said "don't do the crime if you can't do the time".
I don't think it's a matter of portraying them as victems, if anything it's the victems themselves showing how cocky they were thinking they were in control and how quickly and scary things became.
And lets face it... the guards and prisons in these countries ARE thugs and horrible places to be.... Try visiting a north american prison and the guards aren't too friendly, believe me you aren't going to get polite helpful guards over there!
I agree. If someone tells me "I smuggled drugs from Nepal to Tokyo," I want to know WHY. I don't consider an explanation an excuse; I just want my curiosity satisfied as to why an educated person who's willing to work will take these stupid chances.
They talk about boredom and lack of opportunity in their little towns, and in the end, after a few years of fighting for their lives every day in a foreign prison, they flat-out say they were wrong and stupid and now they love their boring little lives and that family and hard work are what it's all about.
To me, the moral is always something like Actions Have Consequences. Sometimes the consequences are awful, but no one is claiming they were innocent.
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Please put some dashes above your sig line so I won't think it's part of your dumb post.
I AGREE WITH THE TOPIC CREATOR!!! NO ONE HAS ANY SYMPATHY FOR THE TEENS IN CHICAGO,DETROIT,HARLEM,ATLANTA,NEW ORLEANS,ETC ETC THAT DO THIS!! THEY AREN'T SEEN AS VICTIMS AND PEOPLE TO FEEL SORRY FOR!!! I GOT A COUSIN THAT WAS SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN PRISON LAST YEAR FOR MOVING KILO'S OF COKE DOWN HERE IN GEORGIA!!! SHE WASN'T SEEN AS A VICTIM EITHER!! AND THE PEOPLE ON THIS SHOW ARE HELPING THESE FOLKS SMUGGLE DRUGS WHICH COME INTO AMERICA AND USUALLY FLOOD THE STREETS OF POOR NEIGHBORHOODS IN BLACK AND BROWN COMMUNITIES
shareWell, I think we have to take this show for what it is: convicts telling their stories. The show is not portraying them one way or another. It is simply them telling their stories. Whether you feel sympathy for them or not is up to YOU. Personally, I usually think that they are one or all of greedy, naive, and/or stupid.
shareI guarantee, if they did a show called "Locked up In Your Own Country" and your cousin was on the show, people would say "Why are they showing that criminal as a victim?" This is just people who went to jail telling their stories, not making victims of criminals.
I do feel bad about your cousin or anyone getting slammed badly in jail on drug charges because I'm kind of a libertarian on the issue. Anyone who wants to destroy their life on drugs should be free to do so. But until the laws change, a person is nuts to commit crimes with such heavy penalties. I hope your cousin goes straight when he/she gets out.
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Please put some dashes above your sig line so I won't think it's part of your dumb post.
bron-tay: drug addicts are not just messing up their own lives, but the lives of family and friends as well. Drug addiction is a nightmare for all the people the addict has relationships with.
Anyone who thinks drugs should be legalized have never known or loved a drug addict. It is pure hell. It's even harder on the clean and sober loved ones who don't have the luxury of being high.
three of these had nothing to with drugs or smuggling. Two were kidnapped, and one guy and girl in PI were facing seven years in prison because of adultery, when the husband and wife were split up.
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Samuel Beckett