Segregation plan to tackle drugs
Play
Justice Minister Paiboon says new strategy to end drug dealing in prisons would lay emphasis on rehabilitation of inmates
SOME 140 Thai prisons that house 330,000 inmates, of whom 70 per cent are drug criminals, are infested with drug-dealing activities, Justice Minister General Paiboon Koomchaya revealed in a recent interview. He vowed to fight the problem with a new inmate segregation approach and greater emphasis on rehabilitation and prevention.
Paiboon has assigned three youth institutions for offenders to serve as a model for drug rehabilitation. These would first segregate drug inmates into groups for different rehabilitation methods.
“It’s a daunting task because we never segregated them for decades. Inmates should be grouped into drug abusers or those possessing drugs, while major dealers would be sent to the Khao Bin Maximum Security Prison in Ratchaburi province,” he said.
About 80 per cent of last year’s 340,000 drug cases involved abuse and drug possession, whilst 20 per cent were big cases. Further investigations showed that many of the suspects in the big cases were merely “drug workers”, not the mastermind or financier. But these “workers” ended up facing prosecutions as a major dealer would, he said.
Thailand has about 50 major drug dealing networks, he added.
The drug workers were often those pushed into the trade due to social inequality, such as many women who delivered drugs to earn money to support their babies. They were prosecuted as major dealers due to the huge amount of narcotics they carried. These suspects were involved in 60,000 major drug busts, which account for 20 per cent of all drug cases, he said.
To solve inequality in prosecuting drug cases, the ministry was studying two key frameworks – whether imprisonment alone could solve the problem and whether it was right to segregate drug convicts based on the amount of drugs seized from them. It would lead to legal amendments, the draft of which should be ready by February, Paiboon said.
“United Nations and Asean conferences I attended recently suggested that the drug problem couldn’t be solved solely by jailing people. There has to be rehabilitation and drug prevention in villages, communities and among youths,” Paiboon said.
Thailand, in the 2015-16 fiscal year, would emphasise drug rehabilitation and prevention and also clearly assign tasks to agencies, he said, adding he was also focused on getting help from other countries in drug suppression.
Recently, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and China discussed the matter and China was pushed to spearhead drug suppression – a strategy that could be a big help, he said.
To lessen inequality in the justice system, the National Council for Peace and Order is working on a three-pronged strategy:
Firstly, laws would be amended to curb inequality. The Justice Fund to assist poor people would be backed by the State Justice Fund Act while authorities would use arbitration to reduce the number of cases heading to court and would take up complaints from those who claimed to be scapegoats.
Secondly, justice system agencies were also brought together in a law and justice screening committee to follow up on the progress of cases that happened before and after the military takeover on May 22, 2014, for cases where the public had doubts about lack of progress.
Thirdly, state officials must help cut inequality by helping members of the public to file complaints over the slow pace of agencies, he said.
After the Royal Thai Police, the Interior Ministry, Office of the Attorney-General, and the PM’s Office last month agreed to set up “community justice” to be attached to the Interior Ministry’s complaint-gathering Dhamrongtham Centres nationwide.
The training of district chiefs and clerks would be completed in February so they can give information about the Justice Fund, arbitrate on disputes or enforce laws. They would work under a provincial-level structure headed by a provincial governor with a Justice Ministry official as secretary and the authority to approve up to Bt500,000 per case, he said.
This structure should be completed by April 1, he said.
