TRIAL BY
COMBAT
Fight for Money. Fight for Freedom.
Fight for the greater glory of Thailand.
With Muay Thai, many of Thailand’s incarcerated prison population find a new way to remove their chains.
Written by Maria Lynn Ehren
S
ome argue that people cannot change. However, new studies may have given promising
hope that this issue can be answered after all.
Before getting into the details, looking into the
topic of Thai prison life and its new program
that the department of corrections installed is
a fascinating insight.
Since the 18th century Thailand’s prisoners have been able to literally fight for their
freedom. In 2013 Prison fights, a charity against
drug abuse, introduced the opportunity for foreigners to join the prison Muay Thai scene.
Muay Thai, also known as the ‘art of 8 legs’, has
long been a well-respected sport in Thailand.
Recently, this opportunity to fight in
prison has become extremely popular to foreigners and Thais alike. The aim of the program
is for prisoners to engage in good behavior, and
only those who are willing to stop using drugs
are allowed to join this rehabilitation program.
Inmates are awarded a sum of money as a reward after winning, but also gain the chance
to have their sentence length reduced. Furthermore, it is said that without a clean track record
in prison this opporunity would be rejected.
In hindsight, this program seems to have
a conflicted aim; convicted felons, serving time
for a crime from theft to murder, use their fists
to gain their freedom. Using science to justify
the sport, here’s why Muay Thai may be, if anything, a beginning to a progressive way of life in
Thai prisons.
26 JULY 2014
Normal Prison Life
Prisons in Thailand are infamous for their unsanitary conditions and overcrowded cells.
Prisoners are not given a bed or mattress, while being
cramped into a cell with dozens of other inmates.
The main reasons for overcrowding according the
Ministry of Justice of Thailand’s report from 2003,
are:
1. Increased numbers of drug offenders,
2. Incarceration of inmates with alleged offences,
(approximately 30% of inmates are awaiting ining
the Ministry of Justice of Thailand’s
3. And the common use of imprisonment in the
criminal justice system.
This raises another issue that inmates that are
potentially innocent are put in with dangerous convicts due to the lack of available facilities, and they
risk waiting years until their appeals may be heard.
Our Brain
Despite the noise in the nature versus nurture
debate, there are a number of prisoners with serious
behavioral problems. Psychopathy is describes as a
disorder where diminished empathy and antisocial
behav ior are present. This type of inmate can be
seen as more dangerous than the rest. Regardless of
whether or not an inmate is a psychopath, getting
into prison involves some sort of social wrongdoing.
Even so that over 16% of inmates are locked up more
than once; some even more than five times (Thaiprison statistics 2008).