Thai Experts Uphold the PERC Verdict of Poor National Justice System by Phairath Khampha 25 June 2002 All key players in Thailand's criminal justice system - police, public prosecutors, judges and prison officials - contribute in varying degrees to the daily miscarriages of justice in this country, according to national legal experts. These actions created a prevailing sense of injustice that affected people in all spheres of social, economic and political life in Thailand, they said. The picture painted by the panel of legal experts speaking at a recent roundtable discussion on criminal justice system reform hosted by The Nation was bleak. The police department, which is meant to curb crime but often participates in crimes, extortion, gambling, drug and protstitution rackets, and in the kidnapping of young girls for the sex trade, takes in ever-increasing numbers of criminal suspects. Public prosecutors, who are supposed to scrutinise criminal cases prepared by police investigators, tend to rubberstamp them and swamp the courts with mountains of cases in order to keep the powerful criminals out of jail. Judges find themselves overwhelmed by a huge workload that makes it virtually impossible to consistently ensure justice to individual defendants and plaintiffs. Jail sentences are mechanically handed down because there are few alternative correctional methods available. Meanwhile, prisons throughout the country are bursting at the seams. Prisons, which are supposed to rehabilitate convicts and return them to the society as law-abiding citizens, become centres of higher learning for convicts to improve their criminal skills. The dismal performance of the country's criminal justice system was reflected in the findings of a May/June 2002 survey by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), which said Thailand's legal system had deteriorated to become the second-worst in the region, after Indonesia's. The PERC survey, which gauged international businessmen's opinions on a wide range of issues in selected countries in Asia and the Pacific, said that failure on the part of successive Thai governments to raise the performance and ethics of the police force had become a national scandal. It added that the police continued to be a major engine of corruption. But most legal experts saw light at the end of the tunnel when asked to make suggestions on fresh strategies to improve the justice system. They said whether reforms would achieve the ambitious goal of a well-functioning criminal justice system that provided justice for all depended very much on public participation. Kittipong Kittayarak, director-general of Department of Probation, said the PERC report confirmed the fact that the performance of a country's criminal justice system was intrinsically linked to its social and economic development. "The rule of law is the very foundation of a society. If the principle of government by the law does not work as it should, every member of the society will suffer," Kittipong said. Now that people from all walks of life were beginning to see more clearly the linkage between the rule of law and the country's social and economic well-being, they should participate actively in the reforming the system, the director-general said The Justice Ministry was supposed to soon create a Judicial Affairs Office, comprising representatives from agencies involved, to coordinate in a more coherent, efficient manner. It was also planning a new forensic science institute and an agency charged with the protection of civil rights. The ministry was also supposed to set up a special investigation department to handle cases that affect national security or have a serious impact on the economy or the social order. This department would provide a degree of checks and balances to the National Police Bureau. Supreme Court Judge Vicha Mahakhun said that although Thailand had adopted a modern criminal justice system based on the principle of presumed innocence, law enforcement officials generally treated criminal suspects as if they were guilty, and often subjected them to abuses and torture. "Old habits die hard. Law enforcement officials are not going to change this mentality as long as people on the street continue to condone such a line of thinking," Vicha said. "The widely held attitude that all criminal suspects are guilty, coupled with the lack of expertise and equipment to gather and verify forensic evidence, perpetuate the police practice of inducing confessions from suspects by torture." Vicha suggested that one of the ways to improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system would be to cut the number of cases brought to court by diverting some of the less serious ones through non-formal channels. The channels could be community-based probation and paroling, which offer alternative ways to rehabilitate wrongdoers. A public awareness campaign must be implemented to educate people about suspects' basic human rights and how citizens can effectively participate in the reform efforts. What the legal experts say Supreme Court Judge Vicha Mahakhun Law enforcement officials generally treat criminal suspects as if they are guilty, despite Thailand having a modern criminal justice system based on the principle of presumed innocence. Old habits die hard. Law enforcement officials are not going to change as long as people on the street continue to condone such a line of thinking. The widely held attitude that all criminal suspects are presumed guilty, coupled with the lack of expertise and equipment to gather and verify forensic evidence, perpetuate the police practice of inducing confessions from suspects by torture. Police cannot be trusted to respect the basic human rights of suspects because their performance is judged by the number of criminal cases that are taken up by public prosecutors and tried in court. Public prosecutors are sometimes reluctant to question police findings on criminal cases for fear of being accused of accepting bribes to help the suspects. Many judges tend to passively preside over the usual adversarial proceedings when they should adopt an inquisitorial process in order to uncover the facts that would enable them to better administer justice. The Corrections Department has largely failed to fulfil its mission of rehabilitating convicts so that they can return to society as productive, law-abiding citizens. The department should start classifying inmates individually for appropriate rehabilitation measures. Kittipong Kittayarak, Director General of the Department of Probation People are beginning to see more clearly the link between the rule of law and the country's social and economic well being, thanks to the recent findings of risk managers and researchers, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC). Greater public awareness of the problems facing the country's criminal justice system would contribute significantly to the reform process in terms of participation and public pressure to ensure change. People should know that the way a society deals with crime is not just for the police to make arrests. An efficient criminal justice system must do much more than that to ensure justice is done and wrongdoers rehabilitated so that they can be returned to society as productive, law-abiding citizens. It takes the whole society to make this happen. A lot of public pressure must be brought to bear on the government to overhaul institutions involved in the criminal justice system. Like most other state agencies, these institutions are inefficient mainly because they have been under a patronage system - instead of merit-based one - for so long. This must change. Any real change requires political will on the part of the government, which must have public support. Somchai Homla-or, Human Rights Advocate One of the reasons why our [the Thai] criminal justice system has performed so poorly is because the mass media has failed to educate the public as to what they should expect from police, public prosecutors, judges and prison officials. All you have to do is look at the way newspapers, television and radio news programmes treat crime stories. All they want is interviews and comments from the national police chief several times a day. How do you expect police investigators to do their job efficiently when they are under constant pressure from the media to deliver quick justice, instead of spending time to carefully gather forensic evidence that could lead to the arrest of wrongdoers? Public prosecutors and even judges are under so much constant media pressure that legal proceedings are distorted. The mass media is trying to be opinion leaders in everything. But in criminal justice matters, they are leading the wrong kind of opinion. For example, many newspapers continue to advocate the idea that prisons should be hell for criminals, and many people have been led to believe this wrong idea.The mass media has a more constructive role to play. It should do more to encourage members of the public to familiarise themselves with the principle that all criminal suspects are presumed innocent unless proven otherwise.