Prisons policy and administration

More than half of the foreigners who died at Malaysian immigration detention camps over the past two years are Myanmar citizens, according to a report by the Malaysian National Human Rights Commission Human Rights, Suhakam, the Malay acronym. The report said that of the 118 deaths in ...

The Prisons Department will allow inmates to carry out religious activities once a month starting from the new fiscal year, said the department’s deputy director from Security Section. “It aims to help prisoners have more peaceful minds. We can’t say what the exact schedule for ...

Bangkok’S Min Buri and Klong Prem prisons as well as Chon Buri’s Pattaya Prison have arranged separate zones to house self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender prisoners separate from non-LGBT prisoners, Department of Corrections director-general Kobkiat Kasiwiwat said on March 22. The move makes Thailand ...

For many former convicts, it is difficult to start a new life because they do not receive a second chance from society. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an elderly man lamented how his son was rejected at the last stage of recruitment after a government agency ...

As Cambodia moves towards opening its first privately run prison, international experts have warned the government may have misunderstood the concept and cautioned that privatisation likely isn’t the best way to tackle chronic overcrowding in prisons. Keep reading ...

Drug use in Cambodia’s prison system is not limited to inmates alone. Prison guards too have been found to be using illicit substances, senior prison officials have acknowledged, with the government set to launch an investigation into the prevalence of drug use among prison staff ...

The Myanmar government under outgoing President Thein Sein on 22 January freed 29 political prisoners across the country, 18 of them from the notorious Insein Prison in the capital Yangon. Keep reading ...

Cambodia’s badly overcrowded prison population leapt by nearly 20 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, government data show, raising serious health concerns. The figures, released by the Interior Ministry’s general department of prisons on 15 December, show that there were 17,522 prisoners ...

A prominent local rights group has been forced to abandon its annual International Human Rights Day (IHRD) events in Cambodia’s prisons for the first time in 20 years because of “prohibitive” conditions imposed by the government, it said on 6 December. In a statement, Licadho said ...

A Polish citizen of Lao heritage jailed in Laos for criticizing the government online will not be among hundreds of prisoners granted pardons by the end of the year because he “does not meet the proper criteria,” according to a public security official. Lao authorities arrested ...