Experts wary of Thai govt's policy shift on drug offenders

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SPECIAL REPORT
Experts wary of junta's policy shift on drug offenders
Kesinee Taengkhieo,
Piyanut Tamnukasetchai
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- Justice Minister General Paiboon Koomchaya's policy to tackle drug dealing in prisons has drawn opposing views from judges and experts. Prisons are considered the new trafficking hub due to the fact that over 70 per cent of the nation's inmates are drug offenders.

Paiboon considers the current policy of segregating or labelling major drug dealers, retailers and drug abusers according to the number of ya ba pills in their possession to be inappropriate. The people who are usually captured with large amounts of drugs in their possession are usually the "drug workers", he said, not the major dealers.

Paiboon said the circumstances of the conviction and money transactions should carry more weight in separating the big fish from others in jail and preventing their interaction. This segregation could lead to retailers or workers becoming major players. He said the big fish alone should be punished, while retailers or workers, besides serving time behind bars, should be rehabilitated and provided with vocational training so they could turn over a new leaf.

However, Supreme Court senior judge Sriamporn Salikupti said only drug abusers should enter rehabilitation, while drug dealers, big or small, must be punished to prevent repeat offences. A common defence - that these workers were forced by poverty into narcotics transporting and should be punished less severely than major dealers - was wrong, he said.

"If people think like that, drug rings would use poor people to move drugs; anyone arrested with a large haul would claim to be a "worker"; and more people would be hired to move drugs because of the light punishment when caught," Sriamporn said.

"Drug transporters focus on Bt20,000-Bt30,000 payment per trip with disregard for damage, while other individuals work hard in a decent job to earn the Bt300 minimum daily wage." He said that totalling up drug amounts to differentiate the "abuser-retailer-major dealer" for punishment was a good method, as it held convicted people accountable for the crime so they would not repeat the offence.

Sarawut Benjakul, secretary-general of the Legal Education Office at the Thai Bar under Royal Patronage, said drug transporters and drug dealers aimed for quick cash and were motivated differently from drug abusers. Rehabilitation could be effective for drug abusers while those involved in drug trafficking - investors, manufacturers or drug transporters - committed a serious crime against society, he said. Other countries focused more on probing drug rings' transactions and seizing their assets.

Another court judge, who requested anonymity, suggested that while some court proceedings in a case would apply the law and hand down severe punishment to drug dealers, the imprisonment step could adopt an inmate segregation [separation into similar groups] method to prevent people from getting deeper into drug dealing crimes - a more doable solution.

"The policy idea is interesting but isn't easy to do, as drug dealers might take advantage of this by claiming to be merely workers to avoid punishment," he added.

Jitnara Naowarat, deputy attorney-general at the Office of Narcotics Litigation, said the law's stipulation that possession of more than 15 ya ba pills with intent to sell, set an initial assumption for this complicated crime that comprised manufacturers, major dealers and also distribution channels to drug abusers. "Retailers/transporters are part of and contribute to the mechanism. Hence, the amount of drugs in an individual's possession as an indicator is useful in the case of proceedings and reduces the burden of witness inquiries. Since the mechanism depends on retailers, such suppression of them would make drug distribution to the abusers more difficult," he added.

Expert prosecutor Kosonwat Inthu-janyong said people caught transporting drugs knew in advance of the severe punishment. So, if they were regarded as merely workers entitled to leniency, more would be hired to move drugs and dealers would no longer have to transport drugs themselves. "Identifying transporters as not major dealers means the suspects are entitled to a disciplinary procedure and vocational training. Their release would mean bad seeds being set free in society. They are used to earning a lot of money and easily. Segregating [assessing] them by the amount of drugs in their possession is thus correct." Wichai Chaimongkol, director of Narcotics Control Board's Region 5, said the drug situation was stable due to a steady demand and so narcotics manufacturing and smuggling continued.

Apinan Aramrat, director of the Chiang Mai University's Northern Substance Abuse Centre, said drug suppression measures so far hadn't involved major dealers.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Experts-wary-of-juntas-policy-shift-on-drug-offend-30254157.html


-- The Nation 2015-02-16

[EnzoRippo]

Bla bla bla then

"Apinan Aramrat, director of the Chiang Mai University's Northern Substance Abuse Centre, said drug suppression measures so far hadn't involved major dealers."

And what if police caught the major dealers first?

[smedly]

The problem is that the organisers of these transporters and dealer networks are well removed from the process of drug distribution which is were most of the police activity is, they need to follow the money trails if they want to find the people at the top - although in saying that the people at the top might in fact be the growers who are external to Thailand - next level down the importers who organise and pay for the huge imports and transports from there it becomes a complicated distribution network of as many as 5-10 tiers to the user, the money flows in the opposite direction to the drugs (but still a very clear traceable path)

so who do you want to take out

The growers/manufacturers - obviously but may be out of the reach of Thailand in a neighboring country

The Importer or internal manufacturer - primary target top tier in Thailand - Death Penalty

Main Distribution Hub - 2rd tier probably directly run by the importer (or close relationship) and runs the transporter (direct money trail to importer) - Death penalty

Distribution network - 5 to 10 tiers of transporters and dealers - varying prison sentence based on quantity

The Users - The victims - Rehabilitation

Edited February 16, 2015 by smedly

[rickirs]

Why a shift at all? Is there a concern about overcrowding in prisoners, or a reluctance to enlarge the prison system? Or is this just pure naivity?

Without distribution and retailers, marketing of ANY PRODUCT cannot succeed.

A drug cartel or "kingpin" exists to provide the capital to finance supply and obtain a return on investment. They can only move tons of drugs into societies through distribution and retail networks. Obviously, no one person can personally accomplish that. Cutoff the support networks and you slow the supply into society. The problem with networks is that demand makes it all too lucrative for the most unskilled person to make money.

A drug policy needs to be three-pronged: supplier, delivery, consumption.

[Guitar God]

Segregating prison population due to severity of the crimes seems perfectly logical to me.

Why give hardcore criminals easy access to vulnerable, desperate people to lure or force them into doing their bidding?

Locking up users who may be victims themselves is inhuman.

I doubt the majority of people in jail for using yaba to stay awake to study or go to school after they worked all night at a market selling clothes or food went into it deciding to become a drug addict. Many probably took a "caffeine " pull or "vitamin " on a "friend's" suggestion and ended up hooked on meth.

[issanaus]

Prisons do not rehabilitate drug addicts. Rehabilitation has to come from a motivation within the person. The role that prisons can play is to provide programs that assist the individual, however prison themselves are not the best environment to run the most successful programs. One of the irony's of the situation of addicts is that often the only way that they can access assistance is after they come into conflict with the criminal justice system (this applies to most western countries)

Part of the solution would be to improve programs outside of the criminal justice system where the addicts or their families could refer themselves to treatment (detox followed by rehabilitation). The major difficulties here is that there are votes for populist programs of being tough on drugs or "crime"; but as with most populist programs the general community is not made aware of all of the associated costs or the associated benefits of alternative strategies.

The fact that the subject is being debated by a Thai government is a positive development that I did not expect to see.

[angiolo]

It is a worldwide problem.No government has the answer,so why Thialand