A Model of Participation between Community Justice Centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison That Aiming to Return the Good Citizens Back to Their Communities

Abstract

               The purposes of this research were to : 1) study the current circumstances and problems of participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison that aiming to return the good citizens back to their communities, 2) construct a model of participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison that aiming to return the good citizens back to their communities, 3) evaluate the model of participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison. This study used mixed methods of both quantitative and qualitative researches. The samples used for qualitative research included 43 of the academicians of the Ministry of Justice, administrators of the Ministry of the Interior working in Chachoengsao Province, government agencies working under the Ministry of Justice in Chachoengsao Province, and members of Community Justice Center Networks that were selected by purposive sampling. The research tools included in-depth interviews and group discussion and the obtained data were analyzed by means of content analysis. Furthermore, the samples used for the quantitative research included 505 of the inmates, selected by simple random sampling. The statistics used for data analysis were frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression analysis. The results of the study revealed that: 1) present circumstances and problems of participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison were as follows: communities had negative attitudes towards the former inmates, the cooperation between related agencies were inefficient, there were no jobs available for the former inmates, communities had received the negative information about former inmates via the mass media, and communities did not have awareness of the importance of participation in the program for “Returning Good Citizens Back to Their Communities.”; 2) the appropriate model of participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison contained the factors as follows: providing the labor skills to the inmates, recommendations of good conduct for the freed inmates, teaching the morality and ethics to the inmates during both before and after their releases, cooperation between the central prison and community justice centres, andpromotion of good attitudes towards the inmates;3) the evaluation of the model of participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison suggested that the model could be applied to develop the effective participation between community justice centres and Chachoengsao Central Prison in the program of “Returning Good Citizens Back to Their Communities”