Thailand to reduce number of inmates by 100,000 in one year

BANGKOK, October 17 (TNA) - Thailand plans to reduce the number of prisoners by 100,000 within one year. Corrections Department Director-General Wittaya Suriyawong told journalists of the target on Friday, after Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha has expressed his worry that the total number of prisoners nationwide is about 310,000 now, reportedly the most overcrowded among member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Wittaya acknowledged that there have been about 14,000 new prisoners nationwide monthly, while 11,000 inmates have been released monthly, meaning the number of prisoners has risen at the average of 3,000 monthly. As some 100,000 prisoners have less than five-year imprisonment left, most of whom are jailed for drug peddlers, Wittaya said his department plans to transfer this group of 100,000 inmates to 30 temporary prisons nationwide and to provide them with strict disciplinary training courses supported my the military in order to lessen the overcrowding situation at local prisons. Besides, the transfer will also help prevent the small drug traffickers from meeting with those imprisoned major ones, which could solve the problem of drug trafficking gangs created at prisons like now. Touching on the parents of two jailed Myanmar men suspected of murdering two British tourists, whose bodies were found on September 15 on Koh Tao, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand off Surat Thani Province in the Thai South, travelling from Myanmar and wishing to visit their sons, the Corrections Department chief noted that he has ordered Koh Samui prison chief, where the two Myanmar suspects have been jailed awaiting a court trial, to provide facilities to the parents. (TNA)