Thailand’s prison system is under considerable strain, with inmate numbers far exceeding the intended capacity, as reported by the Bangkok Post recently. The Thai Justice Ministry has proposed a significant measure to alleviate this issue by amending regulations to allow suspects, whose cases have not yet reached court, to avoid pre-trial detention through the use of Electronic Ankle Monitoring (EM) bracelets. This initiative is a pragmatic approach to addressing prison overcrowding and has broader implications for the criminal justice system in Thailand.

Thailand Bail is dedicated to providing updated information on the COVID-19 crisis and how it is affecting lawyers, police, court appointments, prison visits, and other aspects of the legal industry in Thailand. This article is a follow-up to the previous post “Thailand Bail COVID-19 Update (April 2020)” which highlighted how the coronavirus was affecting the courts and prisons in Thailand in April 2020. Since that last update, there have been some updates for the courts and prisons in Thailand, and we will go through those in this article.

If you have ever spent any time inside a Thai prison, you will know how difficult life can be on the inside. There is constant overcrowding, disease, lack of clean food and water, immense heat, lack of access to people outside the prison, occasional violence and death, and other challenges. Whilst some of these aspects are the same in every prison around the world, Thai prisons have certain unique challenges. The Bangkok Hilton, a fictitious name typically associated with the Bang Kwang Prison, has some of the strictest rules of any Thai prison.

The lawyers and international case managers at Thailand Bail have helped many people successfully fight their criminal cases in Thailand and avoid prison. But there are thousands of people each year who we do not have the opportunity to work for, and many of these people end up in Thai prison. We receive emails and phone calls each week from friends and family members of foreign inmates who are in one of the many prisons in Thailand. Thailand Bail does offer post-case legal services, and one of the most-requested services is to help foreign prisoners in Thai prisons get repatriated to their home countries. Therefore, today’s post is about prisoner transfer agreements in Thailand and the recent news that Thailand will sign two new prisoner transfer agreements with Malaysia and Ukraine. Please read below for more details about prisoner transfer agreements between Thailand and other countries.