Lazing around at a backpacker hostel in the Khao San district of Bangkok, I came across this on the notice board:
VISITING BANGKWANG, KLONG PREM and other prisons.
It is usually possible to go and visit a prisoner without prior notice.
These visits allow the visitor to have a conversation with only a fence
(or two fences as at Bangkwang) between yourself the prisoner.

Keen to see a very different side to Bangkok, this was an invitation too intriguing to pass up.

Dutifully, I followed the straightforward instructions that led me to the river, on a thirty minute river express boat ride up to Nonthaburi, in the poverty-riddled northern part of Bangkok, and then for a brief walk to the prison grounds.

I had to photocopy my passport, obtain a visitors’ slip and nominate the prisoner I was there to visit. At the hostel I had read a little about Jagnathan Samynathan, a Malaysian national imprisoned at Bangkwang. I put his name on the form.

In the visiting centre, prisoners and visitors sat along long benches, facing wire and bars with a metre gap separating the prisoners' fence from the visitors' fence. The distance and the noise made it trying and frustrating, but the prisoners were used to the inconvenience and carried on regardless. On the wall in both English and Thai was a warning: anyone caught trying to organise narcotic sales would be given the death penalty. And have a nice day.

Finally I met Jagnathan, or Jag as he soon became. Jag was an amazingly warm and friendly man, talking at ease about some horrendous and soul-destroying experiences. Piece by piece he revealed his story. A committed Christian in his late 30s, Jag came from the Mallaca province in Malaysia. When his shipping business was struggling in 1991, he headed to Bangkok to try to make some quick cash as a drug courier. But the authorities soon caught the drug syndicate, whose members implicated Jag under interrogation, and he was arrested. Jag didn’t speak Thai but the government assigned him a lawyer who spoke no English. His options were limited: plead guilty and accept a life sentence which might be commuted to a lengthy stay, or to plead not guilty and risk the death penalty, which might be commuted to life in prison, with little hope of any shorter sentence. He chose to fight the charges, and lost.

When we met, Jag had spent 14 years on the inside of Bangkwang prison. In 1996, at the 50th anniversary of the King's coronation, his death penalty was commuted to life in prison: a change which meant he no longer needed to wear shackles on his legs 24 hours a day. He had seen many prisoners come into Bangkwang, but few leave. Overcrowding was rife at the prison, and up to 8,000 prisoners were held there, clearly beyond its capacity. Jag said he slept on the cold floor in a room with 25 others, with no bedding at all. If they were enterprising enough they could make a small blanket, no larger than the size of a pillow case.

As we were talking, some other prisoners walked by and stopped for a chat, including a couple of British prisoners imprisoned for drug offences. The three were Andrew Hawke, Michael Connell and Lee James William. All were remarkably stoic and accepting of their plight, and their guilt, but believed they deserved a second chance. There was no sense of self-pity or desperate longing for the outside world. To keep morale high, the four joked with each other, thick British accents seeming strangely out of place. They muttered about the silliness of the prison bureaucracy and its obscure rules and decisions, and voiced a general consensus that the medical care was inadequate. One prisoner was told he was lying about his injured leg and so denied assistance, whilst Jag avoided the pain of his peptic ulcers through his own crude treatment - he avoided eating anything when the ulcers start causing pain.

I had a mental stereotype of the typical prisoner, and this stereotype is only more exaggerated for those in a foreign prison. I expected world-weary people, showing the physical and emotional scars of time on the inside and holding a high level of cynicism about the outside world. To my mind, it was hardened wrongdoers who found their way into prison, knowing of little else. But I found this stereotype proved wrong: the prisoners I met were fundamentally good blokes, who for their own regrettable reasons did wrong. They were worldly, intelligent, well-read and hopeful about having a decent future. Easy as it would be to dismiss them as fools or worse, they were not the dregs of society but instead the wrong people in the wrong circumstances.

Jag he believed he had an especially tough time because of his nationality. As a Christian from the predominantly Muslim nation of Malaysia, he believed his government was not prepared to fight for his release or his transfer home. Also because of his nationality, he believed he didn’t receive as many visitors as the other foreign prisoners did: many the European missionaries and British travellers were keen to comfort “one of their own”. Jag had used his time inside productively, and had learnt Thai, perfected English, and was attempting Spanish (to go with his Malay and Tamil from before he entered) as well as learning to play the guitar. Jag was arming himself for life on the outside, although sadly this seemed to be a long way off. Jag was hopeful that the 60th anniversary of the royal coronation next year, often celebrated by pardons and sentence reductions for well-behaved prisoners, might result in a pardon for himself and some other prisoners.

Finally the bells rang and it was time to leave the visitors centre. Tearful farewells were exchanged amongst both the Thai families there to visit their loved ones and the foreign visitors there to make contact with new friends. The tears were all from those outside the prison - for those inside it was just another grinding day, and just another farewell until the next visit punctuated the monotony of life behind bars.

Bangkwang Prison exemplifies a dark and sinister side to Bangkok, which few visitors get to see. The stories from those on the inside haunt anyone who hears them, and this is perhaps the closest thing to a living hell. Difficult conditions, no one who cares and no hope of release. The harsh treatment meted out to drug offenders is justified by the apparent success at curbing the drug trade out of Asia’s “Golden Triangle”. The price of this deterrent, though, is the pit of human misery that is Bangkwang Prison. Is it a price worth paying? As I headed back to the relative opulence of downtown Bangkok, I seriously doubted it.