Criminal Law Enforcement: Concept and its Application to Practice

Abstract

This lecture examines three issues as follows

Prescription of an Act as a Criminal Offense: Thailand has Criminal Code and more than 500 Acts in which criminal offenses are prescribed. The overlapping of some criminal offenses causes problems regarding legal illiteracy among villagers or access to law. In some cases, the offenders were unaware that such acts are against law. The problem is how we will campaign for legal literacy among or reduce the number of laws. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand BE 2560 (1997), Article 77, stipulates that the State shall provide the public with access to laws in a convenient and easily understandable manner. We should also encourage people to follow basic laws by promoting the Culture of Lawfulness stated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 16) and consider terminating unnecessary laws such as offenses related to the use of checks.

Enforcement and Interpretation of Criminal Law: For criminal law legislation, no matter how hard the lawmakers try to ensure its clarity, it also depends on how the law enforcers enforce or interpret it. In principle, the enforcement and interpretation of criminal law is different from that of civil law in that criminal law must be strictly enforced and interpreted while civil law allows the use of local customs and tradition or analogy to provision most nearly applicable or general principles law in accordance with the Civil and Commercial Code, Section 4.

Protection of Rights during Prosecution: The prosecution of offenders has been developed into liberalism by focusing more on the protection of liberty and rights and human rights. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand BE 2540 is a major reform of the concept of judicial process which led to a major change. Thailand also has a significant improvement in the criminal procedure law which has been amended. However, the emphasis is mostly on legal modernization. There is still no paradigm shift related to issues such as “temporary releases". Thailand mainly focuses on detention or confinement during the prosecution in practice and collateral is needed in exchange for a temporary release.