Leyes sobre drogas en Tailandia: los límites de las reformas para aliviar el hacinamiento carcelario

IDPC discute medidas alternativas a la encarcelación implementadas en Tailandia desde las perspectivas de los profesionales y las personas involucradas en el sistema penal. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

There has been a sharp increase in the number of people who have been charged, found guilty, and imprisoned for drug-related offences around the world over the past twenty years. In comparison to other countries, Thailand has a high proportion of people imprisoned for drug offences; as of 1 January 2024, 206,080 people were imprisoned for drug offences, accounting for 74.5% of all people in prison. Critical factors that have led to this high level of incarceration include the extremely punitive approach taken by national drug policies and law enforcement in the past—the so-called ‘drug-war’ in Thailand. However, it is increasingly considered an unsuccessful approach to realising both drug control and health promotion objectives.

Subsequently, concepts related to decriminalising the use and possession of drugs for personal use, such as integrated socio-economic measures, demand and supply reduction, alternative development, public sensitisation, awareness-raising campaigns, and public health services, were incorporated into the Thai criminal justice system in recent years, which seem to have contributed to a decline in the prison population over the past five years although the overall level remains high. Featured amongst these changes is the promulgation of a new Narcotics Code in 2021; this paper discusses the alternative measures to incarceration adopted in the Narcotics Code from the perspectives of practitioners and people involved in the criminal legal system.