April 21st, 2007, 16:24
EDITORIAL Bangkok Post
Welcome change in our prisons
Prisons are not supposed to have all the comforts of home but they are intended to be an improvement on medieval dungeons and torture chambers. While jails in some Western countries might have more in common with the former, our prisons have long had characteristics of the latter. That has largely been due to rampant overcrowding, appalling food and a primitive, brutal and unhealthy environment which motivated escape attempts and riots. Times, though, are changing and the Corrections Department deserves credit for some truly thought-provoking innovations. No longer does the department want our jails to be mere places of detention which double as ''crime colleges'', encouraging criminals to commit further, often more serious crimes after their release. Instead, the focus is now on rehabilitation and deterring repeat offenders through education and experimental therapy.To this end, a number of stress-relieving experiments in penal reform have been launched. The past month alone has seen the removal of excessive fencing around remand homes to avoid the ''institutional'' stigma and a more appealing diet introduced with white rice replacing unmilled brown. It also saw a courageous young woman earn her freedom by beating her Japanese opponent to win an internationally-supervised world boxing title fight in the Klong Prem prison grounds.
Other well-behaved prisoners serving short sentences have been trained to work as maids, carers of the elderly, babysitters, therapeutic masseuses and general housekeepers. They are then assisted with weekday placement, with incarceration limited to weekends. This helps to keep families intact. Such work release programmes are welcome because the inmates who suffer the most are those who have committed minor offences and for whom a more suitable punishment would have been a non-custodial one.
Guards are being taught to be more efficient and humane and prisoners encouraged to value themselves through football matches, wedding ceremonies, meditation, traditional massage services, prison choirs and, on occasion, granted conjugal rights. In some prisons, inmates can now undertake studies via satellite or webcasts, make handicrafts for sale or learn farming techniques at military camps. Anger management training is available for those who have abused family members.
One somewhat bizarre and uniquely Thai project has proven especially popular. When it was launched just under a year ago, 48 inmates from 20 prisons in the Northeast took part in a regional laughing competition. Time in prison is not generally regarded as a laughing matter but there was no black humour involved in this pioneering event to ease stress among convicts.
In the wake of the Sherry Ann Duncan fiasco, which saw innocent men die in jail, the Justice Ministry has finally launched an overdue review of 561 other unsafe cases where prisoners are actually serving time. In another breakthrough, pregnant women will also be allowed up to a year after giving birth to care for their newborns before actually serving their prison terms under legislation approved by the Council of State, cabinet and tabled before the National Legislative Assembly.
This progress in penal reform is a welcome change from previous policies of merely removing offenders from the streets, cramming them so tightly in disease-ridden cells that they had to take turns to lie down, and then leaving them there to rot. Transgressors were often cast into a world of brutal exploitation and unfair treatment by guards with easy access to drugs, lack of separation of different categories of prisoners, rape, involuntary servitude, unwarranted beatings and a fierce competition for the basic necessities of survival.
Full article
http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/21Apr2007_news18.php
Welcome change in our prisons
Prisons are not supposed to have all the comforts of home but they are intended to be an improvement on medieval dungeons and torture chambers. While jails in some Western countries might have more in common with the former, our prisons have long had characteristics of the latter. That has largely been due to rampant overcrowding, appalling food and a primitive, brutal and unhealthy environment which motivated escape attempts and riots. Times, though, are changing and the Corrections Department deserves credit for some truly thought-provoking innovations. No longer does the department want our jails to be mere places of detention which double as ''crime colleges'', encouraging criminals to commit further, often more serious crimes after their release. Instead, the focus is now on rehabilitation and deterring repeat offenders through education and experimental therapy.To this end, a number of stress-relieving experiments in penal reform have been launched. The past month alone has seen the removal of excessive fencing around remand homes to avoid the ''institutional'' stigma and a more appealing diet introduced with white rice replacing unmilled brown. It also saw a courageous young woman earn her freedom by beating her Japanese opponent to win an internationally-supervised world boxing title fight in the Klong Prem prison grounds.
Other well-behaved prisoners serving short sentences have been trained to work as maids, carers of the elderly, babysitters, therapeutic masseuses and general housekeepers. They are then assisted with weekday placement, with incarceration limited to weekends. This helps to keep families intact. Such work release programmes are welcome because the inmates who suffer the most are those who have committed minor offences and for whom a more suitable punishment would have been a non-custodial one.
Guards are being taught to be more efficient and humane and prisoners encouraged to value themselves through football matches, wedding ceremonies, meditation, traditional massage services, prison choirs and, on occasion, granted conjugal rights. In some prisons, inmates can now undertake studies via satellite or webcasts, make handicrafts for sale or learn farming techniques at military camps. Anger management training is available for those who have abused family members.
One somewhat bizarre and uniquely Thai project has proven especially popular. When it was launched just under a year ago, 48 inmates from 20 prisons in the Northeast took part in a regional laughing competition. Time in prison is not generally regarded as a laughing matter but there was no black humour involved in this pioneering event to ease stress among convicts.
In the wake of the Sherry Ann Duncan fiasco, which saw innocent men die in jail, the Justice Ministry has finally launched an overdue review of 561 other unsafe cases where prisoners are actually serving time. In another breakthrough, pregnant women will also be allowed up to a year after giving birth to care for their newborns before actually serving their prison terms under legislation approved by the Council of State, cabinet and tabled before the National Legislative Assembly.
This progress in penal reform is a welcome change from previous policies of merely removing offenders from the streets, cramming them so tightly in disease-ridden cells that they had to take turns to lie down, and then leaving them there to rot. Transgressors were often cast into a world of brutal exploitation and unfair treatment by guards with easy access to drugs, lack of separation of different categories of prisoners, rape, involuntary servitude, unwarranted beatings and a fierce competition for the basic necessities of survival.
Full article
http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/21Apr2007_news18.php