ABOVE: Thai female inmates attend a writing workshop at a prison in Ayutthaya in this Nov. 22, 2013, file photo. Photo: William Davies / AFP
Thailand has an outsized number of women behind bars compared to the rest of the world, a rising trend that’s resulted in the world’s highest per capita female prison population.
The increasing number and high rate of female incarceration was raised during a forum yesterday by sociologists from Mahidol University and a health foundation to discuss the poor conditions in which they live and initiatives to prepare them to re-enter society.
According to the Corrections Department, Thailand had 47,623 female prisoners, making it the fourth-largest such population in the world, behind the United States (>200,000), China (>100,000) and Russia (almost 55,000).
Corrections Department officer Vitaya Suriyawong stated, “The number of new female prisoners is increasing every year; we cannot accommodate them all properly.”
A disproportionate number of Thai women are imprisoned on drug offenses. In 2012, nearly 200,000 arrests were made related to distribution and use of methamphetamines, or yaba.
The five solutions that were proposed at the forum titled “Proposals to reform the female prison: reality and imagination” included: reducing overcrowding in prisons, promoting basic health care and better living conditions, training prison wards to be more sensitive and understanding towards prisoners, preparing prisoners for parole, and returning foreign prisoners to their home country.
Overcrowding of female prisoners causes poor living conditions which result in physical and mental health problems, The Nation reported.
The forum was hosted by the Thai Association of Population and Social Researchers, Mahidol University, and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation.
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