It is getting utterly ridiculous.

Pick a mushroom in a forest and get thirty years.

Have a trace element of an illegal substance in a wallet and kiss
goodbye to freedom for a few decades.

But rent a taxi to a double convicted rapist and pay 3,000 baht.

This is not a rant about people who are not brought to justice a la
Red Bull heir.

This is not a rant about those who slip through the net and never face justice.

Though that is horrendous enough in Thailand.

This is about those people who have broken the criminal law or those
who have fallen foul of government regulations – and get such
ridiculous sentences that it makes a mockery of the very word justice
itself.

Lenient sentences that both belittle and are a disgrace to victims,
light sentences that make criminals snigger with glee as they serve
five minutes in jail and are out again to repeat their crimes.

Severe sentences particular, but not exclusively, against the poor and
downtrodden, that advertise Thailand not merely as a place with a
ruling elite that can do as it pleases with its unwitting population,
but as a country of absurd inconsistency and patent ongoing injustice.

This is not a topical rant. One brought on by an isolated incident.

Any week of the year you can find poor people like the mushroom
sellers who are facing the most incredible harshness because they
couldn’t afford adequate legal representation.

Every week you can find people who will not see the light of day
because someone had it in for them and the system could not protect
them.

Every week you can see terrible crime – crime that has been confirmed
in a court of law, or admitted in a police station without duress –
punished by the proverbial slap on the wrist, sometimes even let go
because an apology was made to society or a graap or a wai was
forthcoming.

The inconsistency is staggering, shameful and institutionalized. It is
nothing short of disgusting and an affront to the public who deserve
so much better.

But nobody seems to be doing anything about it. The clamor for change
seems to be muttered in markets, quietly spoken of on buses and in
queues for street food.

The people who are so aware of injustice should be shouting for change.

Many laws and statutes seem to have been in existence from a bygone
era. They have simply never caught up to modern times.

Fines seem to be stuck in a time-warp – it’s a wonder they are not
announced in ticals.

But it is the sentences that really rankle. Someone seems to have
plucked figures from the air – where is the consistency, where is the
fairness?

There is virtually none and consequently the faith of the public in
what passes for the justice system could hardly be lower.

The jails are full to the rafters with those convicted of drugs’
offences – just like in America. While in the US the overwhelming
majority are black and poor here they are darker skinned and poor.

Seems awfully similar.

Few would say that drugs are not a scourge in either society but is
there not a woeful imbalance? And do the harsh sentences handed down
to minor dealers address the problem.

Of course they don’t – they just make the authorities look as though
they have done something useful while the big fish go free and are
almost never apprehended.

So what needs to be done?

Well first off, there needs to be a National Commission set up to
review sentences and make recommendations to address the haphazard
imbalances in both civil and criminal systems.

Then those recommendations need to be taken on board – if and when the
country is returned to democracy, that is.

Equally, the fines that are handed out need urgent review. Companies
that flagrantly rip off and con the public need to be slapped with
something that hurts.

Not something they can find in the till that might have been a
reasonable sum in 1905.

The rich who break the law need to pay. And pay through the nose.

The commission’s watchwords need to be modernization and justice. The
people – as quiet as they seem to be at times – are fed up with
inconsistency and patent unfairness.

The time to act is actually long past.

But if something is not done soon those who point the finger at
Thailand’s justice system and laugh at the absurd inconsistences will
just gain more traction.

And the face that Thais are so desperate to protect will just get
increasing hard for anyone to take seriously.