Inmates at Ayutthaya jail get chance for better future
Vocational courses to help firsttime offenders boost their job prospects
WELL-BEHAVED inmates at the Ayutthaya Provincial Prison will get an opportunity to do vocational courses and obtain vocational qualifications while serving their time thanks to a new initiative launched yesterday.
Akanit Klangsaeng, deputy chief of the Office of Vocational Education Commission, and Wittaya Suriyawong, chief of the Corrections Department, signed a Memorandum of Understanding yesterday at the department’s head office in Nonthaburi province to initiate the pilot project, which began on October 26.
The pilot programme consists of 120 Thai male first-time offenders aged between 18 and 30 years serving five to 15 years who had a record of good behaviour.
Of those 120 students – most of whom were from Bangkok and other central provinces – 90 were studying for vocational certificates and the rest for vocational diplomas.
The three areas of study were mechanical technology, welding and computer graphics. The most popular subject was mechanical technology, which attracted 40 vocational-certificate students and 30 vocational-diploma students.
The scheme was part of a larger project called “specific purpose prisons”, which will include Education prison, Vocational prison, Agricultural prison and Labour prison, said Pontip Chocksamai, director of the Rehabilitation Bureau.
“Prisons will become schools where inmates can achieve vocational certificates.
“Thus, when they are released, they can make a decent living and won’t return to prisons,” said Chadaporn Raksasap, head of the Correctional Education project committee.
Ayutthaya Provincial Prison was selected for this scheme because the province has eight vocational schools that agreed to provide courses for the prisoners.
The area also has many industrial estates, which means the newly-trained offenders will have a better chance of getting jobs after their release, Chadaporn said.
The colleges participating in the scheme include Phra Nakhon Sri Ayutthaya Technical College, Automotive Industry Technical College and Ayutthaya Polytechnic College.
In the future, the project would hopefully expand to have at least one “vocation school in prison” in each region of the country, in a bid to meet the government’s policy for human resource quality development, Chadaporn said.
