Research
CloseReoffending in Thailand
Thailand is facing prisoner overcrowded inside prisons. The main reason for this situation is that the released prisoners commit crimes again to return to prison on purpose because they can’t make their living after release. One of the strategies that the Ministry of Correction uses to address this challenge is to develop their skill while serving their custody. The prison provides various courses for prisoners to enroll from craftsmanship skills and Thai royal culinary to undergraduate studies. Most prisoners finish their studies before release, so the prisons encourage prisoners to create products to sell to make money they will receive after release. Despite the story and quality, the sale volume is not that high and has a very small profit margin. Moreover, prisoners are not willing to continue their studies and just live by the days waiting for release day.
Craftsmanship in prison
The Bangkok Remand Prison offers a wide range of vocational training programs for prisoners, equipping them with skills in wood carpentry, metalsmithing, rattan crafts, pottery, and textiles. These programs are designed not only to provide rehabilitation but also to support economic reintegration post-release. The products crafted through these training courses are sold, with the earnings contributing to prisoners' settlement funds, helping them transition back into society with financial support.
Among these vocational outputs, furniture production accounts for 24% of the prison’s total product revenue, highlighting the significant role of woodworking and craftsmanship within the program. This creates an opportunity to enhance the value and visibility of prisoner-made furniture, integrating design innovation with rehabilitation efforts. By merging industrial production with traditional craftsmanship, this project seeks to explore how design can contribute to skill-building, economic empowerment, and social reintegration.
Despite the craftsmanship and effort invested in their work, prison-made furniture and products often struggle to align with current market trends, leading to lower sales and limited commercial appeal. One of the key challenges is that prisoners have little to no connection with the outside world, making it difficult for them to stay updated on design trends, consumer preferences, and evolving aesthetics. As a result, their designs often appear outdated, limiting their competitiveness in the marketplace.
To better understand the workflow and constraints within the prison system, I conducted a task analysis to map out the production process inside the workshops. Given the rigid daily schedule, prisoners have only four hours per day allocated for vocational training and craftwork. This time restriction significantly prolongs the production cycle, making it difficult to efficiently complete products and meet market demands.
With limited work hours and a structured environment, the workflow is fragmented, causing delays in product development and limiting the ability to experiment with new designs or respond to market trends. This insight highlights the need for process optimization and design adaptation, ensuring that the products can be crafted more efficiently without compromising quality.
Inside the prison, the two main groups of people involved in the vocational training and production process are prisoners and prison officers. To efficiently manage workshops and product creation, they divide themselves into various roles, ensuring that tasks are distributed effectively across different craft disciplines.
Prisoners take on roles such as craftsmen, assistants, and quality controllers, depending on their skills and experience within the program. Some focus on carpentry, metalwork, or weaving, while others handle finishing touches, packaging, or basic administrative tasks related to workshop operations. However, due to the rigid structure of prison routines and limited opportunities for cross-training, these roles often remain fixed within single disciplines, limiting the potential for collaborative, multidisciplinary design approaches.
Prison officers, on the other hand, serve as supervisors and coordinators, ensuring that workshops operate smoothly within the constraints of prison regulations. They oversee schedules, material distribution, and security measures, playing a crucial role in maintaining order while facilitating prisoner participation in vocational training.
This structured role distribution is essential for managing production within the prison environment, but it also presents challenges, such as workflow inefficiencies, lack of skill-sharing, and limited cross-material collaboration. Addressing these issues could enhance product innovation, efficiency, and market competitiveness, ultimately improving the economic and rehabilitative impact of these programs.
Another key challenge in the prison’s vocational training program is the separation of courses by material—woodwork, metalwork, rattan weaving, pottery, and textiles are all taught independently, with little to no crossover between disciplines. As a result, prisoners lack exposure to multidisciplinary skills, limiting their ability to experiment with material combinations or develop more complex, innovative designs.
This siloed approach creates a narrow skillset, restricting opportunities for prisoners to apply diverse craftsmanship techniques in their work. Without encouragement to explore other courses, they become confined to single-material production, which reduces the potential for higher-value, hybrid products that could appeal more to contemporary markets.
Key Insights
- Rising Material Costs
The Bangkok Remand Prison primarily uses premium materials for its handcrafted products. However, material costs continue to rise, making it difficult to achieve profitability. Given the low selling prices, breaking even is a challenge, limiting the program’s ability to generate sustainable financial support for prisoners upon release. - Rigid Work Schedules & Slow Production
Due to the strict daily schedule, prisoners have only four hours per day to work on their products. As a result, completing a single product takes over a week, slowing down production capacity. This impacts the prison’s ability to meet customer demand, making it difficult to maintain a consistent stock for sales. - Outdated Design Due to Limited References
Prisoners do not have internet access, restricting their exposure to contemporary design trends. Their only available references are old home & décor magazines, leading to outdated designs that struggle to attract modern consumers. This limits the marketability of their products and affects sales potential. - Manufacturing Errors & Lack of Precision
Every product is handcrafted from sketch to final assembly, leading to higher margins of error and inconsistencies in manufacturing. Without access to precision tools or digital fabrication, achieving standardized quality is challenging, making it harder to compete with mass-produced alternatives. - Siloed Training Programs & Limited Skill Integration
Prison vocational courses are separated by material disciplines—woodworking, metalwork, rattan weaving, pottery, and textiles are all taught independently. This structure prevents prisoners from combining skills across materials, limiting their ability to create innovative, mixed-material designs that could have higher market appeal. Without cross-disciplinary learning, their design potential remains narrow and traditional, further contributing to low sales and market competitiveness.
Opportunity
With rising costs, slow production, outdated designs, manufacturing inconsistencies, and siloed training, the current system makes it difficult for the prison to scale production and generate significant profits. To ensure sustainable economic support for prisoners, the program needs to adopt new strategies that:
- Introduce cost-effective materials or optimize material usage.
- Improve production efficiency without compromising craftsmanship.
- Provide updated design references to align with market trends.
- Implement manufacturing techniques that reduce errors while maintaining handcrafted value.
- Foster cross-disciplinary training, allowing prisoners to integrate woodworking, metalwork, and other skills into more marketable designs.
By addressing these challenges, the prison can enhance product quality, market appeal, and profitability, ultimately creating a more effective vocational training and rehabilitation model.
