Justice doesn’t last

Re: “Corrections chief eyes reform”, ( BP,

Oct 3).

It is a welcome hint of reform to bad old thinking to see a chief of prisons who acknowledges long-standing grave defects in Thailand’s antiquated prison system. When society imprisons citizens, those citizens do not stop being human beings and must be treated with the respect any human deserves, which means that society has an obligation to provide decent conditions for those it locks away to protect itself from them.

And as the new chief says, many of those unjustly crowded into Thailand’s prisons should never have been sent there in the first place: it only harms them, their families and Thai society to imprison them when other options would be both more moral and effective in reducing harm to society.

As the Portuguese example and other evidence consistently show, we know that decriminalising drug use (all drug use by adults) is a far more effective solution to the harms of drug abuse than throwing mainly young offenders of poor means in prison for indefensibly long periods at great cost to all concerned, save of course the mafia scum and their loyal officials who are the sole beneficiaries of such a misguided response to a very real drug problem.

With such sound reforms in mind, how long can this man of vision last before being shunted to avoid upsetting the mafia scum and their colluding officials in all areas of the “justice” system?

FELIX QUI