UNITY OF CRIMINAL INQUIRY

Abstract

An inquiry is an essential part of criminal justice and has a spirit of fact-finding to prevent and suppress the offence. In criminal proceedings, the related state and organizations shall unitedly collaborate in criminal action and suppression. According to the study on Thailand’s background of the criminal inquiry power, the finding of Thailand’s criminal inquiry system indicated that there was a lack of unity and lack of proper checks and balance of the related agencies, resulting in several faults in collection of evidence in inquiry stage. Therefore, this article aims to study the problems of lack of unity and checks and balances in Thailand’s criminal inquiry, in order to analyze a problem-solving guideline according to the related laws through a comparative study on the criminal inquiry system of France, Germany, England, and United States of America. According to the analysis, Thailand should amend the laws relating to the processes in inquiry stage to conform with the principle of inquiry and litigation, to be the same process. This article also aims to develop the inquiry system to ensure that the related organizations shall collaborate in fact-finding pursuant to the principle of international inquiry. An inquiry official shall have an inquiry power and a public prosecutor shall play a role in controlling the inquiry or can participate in inquiry to efficiently collect the evidence for the proper checks and balances on exercising the inquiry power, and as a security of fairness and protection of liberty and rights of people, bringing about to the reliance on the process of judgement.