A quarter of Hong Kong’s prisoners are women, a record-high percentage skewed by impoverished foreign drug mules who are often duped or coerced.

Awaiting deportation after her release, Lecarnaque Saavedra sat on a bunk bed in a cramped hostel and described how she lost her gamble for quick money.

It was 2013 and she was broke. Her husband, the main breadwinner for her family in Peru’s capital Lima, had recently left and she needed eye surgery.

Word got around the neighbourhood and she said she was soon approached by a woman who offered her a deal: fly to Hong Kong to pick up tax-free electronics that could be sold for a profit on return, and be paid US$2,000.

“They find people who are in a precarious economic situation,” Lecarnaque Saavedra said. “They look for them and in this case it was me.”

A diminutive figure with a face lined by hardship, 60-year-old Lecarnaque Saavedra said she wanted to warn others who might be tempted by such deals.

She lost composure when recounting the moment customs officers pulled her aside and it dawned on her she would not be seeing her daughter and mother for many years.

“I reflected on the damage I caused to my family, to my children, to my mother, because they were the ones who felt worse than me and that hurts me,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

She described how officers found two jackets inside her suitcase that had been filled with condoms containing about 500g of cocaine in liquid form.

In the hopes of receiving a lighter sentence, Lecarnaque Saavedra pleaded guilty, though she maintains she did not know about the cocaine and was never paid.

“The bosses are free, they have not been arrested and I don’t know why,” she said.

‘Coercion comes in many forms’

That story is all too familiar in Hong Kong women’s prisons.

Activists, prison volunteers, lawyers and women in jail who AFP spoke to over the last year said foreign drug mules make up a major chunk of those in female prison wings.

Hong Kong Correctional Services said 37% of foreign inmates were female but declined to comment on the reasons for this.

With a thriving port and airport, Hong Kong has long been a global hub for trade both legitimate and criminal.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, its airport was one of the world’s busiest and best-connected.

Drug syndicates favour using women as mules, believing they are less likely to draw attention from authorities.

Official statistics show that a quarter of the 8,434 people serving time in Hong Kong last year were women – the highest rate globally, according to the World Prison Brief.

Hong Kong dwarfs second-place Qatar, another global transport hub, where 15% of people in prison are women. Only 16 other countries or territories have proportions above 10%.

Father John Wotherspoon, a Catholic prison chaplain who has spent decades working with convicted drug smugglers, said the vast majority of female mules were vulnerable foreigners.

“Coercion is a big problem and it can come in many forms, economic, physical, emotional,” he said from his office in a crowded Hong Kong neighbourhood known for its red-light businesses.

Wotherspoon, a bundle of energy at 75 years old, has travelled repeatedly to Latin America to try and help families of those arrested – even confronting traffickers at times.

He attends many of the drug trials that fill the daily schedule at Hong Kong’s High Court, raises donations for the convicted and helps maintain a website that names some of the characters he thinks should be behind bars – collected in part by testimony from those in jail.

“The big problem is the masterminds, the big fish I call them, don’t get much of a mention,” he said.