Globalization and Restorative Justice: in the Thai Criminal Justice System

Jutharat Ua-amnoey*

Unfortunately, with the onset of the 21" century Thai society and the crime problems it faces, had become more complex than ever before. A lack in overall criminal justice policy planning, a lack in cooperation and coordination, and inadequate funds have been among the major obstacles hampering the successful introduction of community-based treatment measures as alternatives to the current practices that are based mostly on retributive, custodial measures. As a consequence, the criminal justice system in Thailand is swamped by a huge backlog of cases and severe overcrowding in prisons. It is not uncommon for a criminal case to take more than a year to get through the criminal courts of first instance and several more years before the final decision of the Supreme Court is given (Kittipong Kittayarak and Jutharat Ua-amnoey, 2003, p. 3). Regarding prison overcrowding, according to the latest statistics revealed in the annual year 2002, there are approximately 245,973 inmates in prisons where the space available was meant to accommodate only 100,000(1). Considering the manpower of 10,7000 correction officers, the ratio of officers to inmates is approximately 1 to 24, which is very far from the internationally preferred ratio of I to 4 or 5 (Kittipong Kittayarak and Jutharat Ua-amnoey, 2003, p. 3), as shown in Table 1 (with data from the Department of Corrections, 2003).

Table I Type and Number of Prisoner

Furthermore, it has also been shown that the quality of Thai criminal procedures is below par and that there is some injustice in the system. The best example of this is shown in the mistake in the "Sherry Ann Duncan murder case." Kittipong Kittayarak (1997, p.50) critiqued this case and claimed that the miscarriage of justice here was due to the excessive power of the police and the organization's abuse of said power, the lack of cooperation and coordination among agencies in the criminal justice process, the delay in the proceedings (it look about ten years for case to be closed), the unnecessary detention of the accused during the trial, and the lack of compensation for the accused after later being acquitted. Likewise, the productivity of the system has been questioned because it has been found that there was a 19.8% rate of juvenile delinquent recidivism in 2000(2) and that the percentage of adult recidivists was 11.58% in 2003(3).

2) As with adult cases, the statistics of juvenile delinquents have remained fairly steady in the last five years from 29,284 cases in 1998 to 29,622 in 2002. Most of these were narcotics offenses. Twenty one point five percent of the 2002 cases were sent to the Central Observation and Protection Center for a period of between six months to three years without any restoration process.