Warning Against Jails Being Made Too Cosy

[george]

Warning against jails being made too cosy

Experts say deterrence could lose its meaning

BANGKOK: -- Social scientists and media advocates have urged the government not to make prisons too comfortable, warning there could be more repeat offenders as a consequence, and deterrence could lose its meaning.

Atcharapan Charaswat, of Mahidol University's social science and humanities faculty, praised the Corrections Department for the improvements it had made to living conditions in prisons and to human rights protection of inmates.

But she warned that improving prison standards could be a double-edged sword.

The growing perception of prisons as being a pleasant place to stay could invite rather than deter prospective offenders, she told a seminar on international standardisation of Thai prisons.

''We shouldn't make prisons so liveable that people want to be in them rather than away from them. Inmates will feel as if they can't get enough of the incarceration,'' she said.

The department has piloted a model project at the Thon Buri Special Prison aimed at lifting Thai prisons to the same level as international jails by improving inmates' living conditions and ensuring human rights are respected.

Ms Atcharapan said prisons nationwide should follow this example while the Corrections Department should hire companies to take care of the day-to-day running of prisons so officials would have more time to develop correctional policies.

She said prisons for women inmates should be allowed to run on the Thon Buri model and there should be prisons for the ''third gender'' as well.

Another major task was to rid jails of convicts who terrorised other prisoners.

Boonlert Changyai, senior editor of Matichon newspaper, said standardisation did not mean impressing upon the inmates that prisons were comfortable or they would soon be released with a pardon.

Lifting the standard involved a strict behavioural reform regimen so inmates would not want to be jailed again.

The department should treat hospitably its own staff, prisoners and prisoners' relatives who visit. This would work especially well in prisons in the insurgent-prone provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani as it would help ease local people's mistrust of the authorities.

--Bangkok Post 2005-07-28

[thaibebop]

There have been reports done in America along the same line. They found that a certain percentage of most long term prison population wanted to stay there. Three meals a day, a gym, cable TV, a library, and an internet connection. Why leave indeed?

[terdsak_12]

There have been reports done in America along the same line. They found that a certain percentage of most long term prison population wanted to stay there. Three meals a day, a gym, cable TV, a library, and an internet connection. Why leave indeed?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All you need now is a few beers and a bird every now and then and you'll be sorted.

[thaibebop]

There have been reports done in America along the same line. They found that a certain percentage of most long term prison population wanted to stay there. Three meals a day, a gym, cable TV, a library, and an internet connection. Why leave indeed?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All you need now is a few beers and a bird every now and then and you'll be sorted.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OOOHHH, they've got the "birds", guy. It's the beers they're waitin' on.

[Jimmy in Bangkok]

I wouldn't have thought that there was too much of a danger of making the prisons too comfortable here though! and haven't they tried somewhere already having private companies running prisons? I thought they had very mixed results but if anyone can shed some more light on this.....

[Merlin]

OOOHHH, they've got the "birds", guy. It's the beers they're waitin' on.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

they've probably got homebrew moonshine as a substitute...

[khall64au]

I wouldn't have thought that there was too much of a danger of making the prisons too comfortable here though! and haven't they tried somewhere already having private companies running prisons? I thought they had very mixed results but if anyone can shed some more light on this..... 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

US prisons are run by private companies and the same companies run Australia's refugee detention centres.... with many reports of cost-cutting and human rights abuses

[darsie]

Thai prisons are a DISGRACE and I can personally vouch for that from personal experience.

They are humiliating and degrading places, in the main, where human rights abuses DO take place, particularly are if you are an Asian - non Thai - prisoner: Burmese, Loatian etc.

Also, the Thai poice and the judiciary being as they are in Thailand, a lot of inmates happen to be innocent - the victims of police frame-ups and downright incompetence.

Also, the penalties incurred for most crimes in Thailand are by western standards excessively severe resulting in prisoners still serving their time, when normally in other more civilised and fairer societies they would have been released years ago.

There is terrible over-crowding, deplorable sanitary conditions (one toilet shared by two hundred and fifty men is not uncommon) and NO, if any recreational or educational facilities - just lock-up from 4.00pm until 6.30am in the morning, with mind-numbing and monotonous prison work interspersing this.

[darsie]

and haven't they tried somewhere already having private companies running prisons?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, in the States, most prisons are run now run by private companies - which partly accounts for the soaring prison population there...over two million incarcerated and growing by the week. (which, of course, equates with more revenue and bigger profits for those same private companies)

The States now has the highest incarceration rate in the world per head of population!

Police state America....here we come.

[marquess]

Thai prisons are a DISGRACE and I can personally vouch for that from personal experience.

They are humiliating and degrading places, in the main, where human rights abuses DO take place, particularly are if you are an Asian - non Thai - prisoner: Burmese, Loatian etc.

Also, the Thai poice and the judiciary being as they are in Thailand, a lot of inmates happen to be innocent - the victims of police frame-ups and downright incompetence.

Also, the penalties incurred for most crimes in Thailand are by western standards excessively severe resulting in prisoners still serving their time, when normally in other more civilised and fairer societies they would have been released years ago.

There is terrible over-crowding, deplorable sanitary conditions (one toilet shared by two hundred and fifty men is not uncommon) and NO, if any recreational or educational facilities - just lock-up from 4.00pm until 6.30am in the morning, with mind-numbing and monotonous prison work interspersing this.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There is absolutely no chance of Thai prisons ever becoming too comfortable. I think that the writer of the article ought to spend a month or so in one, before she comes out with such nonsense.