After  looking on  play.com for books about Thailand I ordered not only a travel guide but also the 1998 book 'The Damage Done' by Warren Fellows , an Australian who in the late seventies became involved in drug-trafficking for what seemed 'easy money' .
After several journeys abroad , having sometimes come very close to being caught he was persuaded , against his better judgement and having been told that he was under police surveillance in Australia to collect some heroin from Bangkok .
He was caught and served nearly twelve years in hellish Bangkok  prisons where sadism , torture , murder , deprivation , disease  , madness ,  suicide and drug-use were rife , before finally being released and , not suprisingly , permanantly mentally scarred by  horrendous things he'd experienced and witnessed , in disgustingly overcrowded , filthy prisons where some  guards may try to treat prisoners fairly but where  others delight in being able to physically and mentally torture or murder  according to their depraved whims .
And it's no 'short sharp shock' ;  most prisoners there are sentenced to from ten years to life .
So does anyone deserve that , whatever they've done , and does such a system usefully act as a deterrent to nasty crime ?
I do'nt know , though as those prisons are so overcrowded I do'nt think  they can have such a deterring  effect .
I'm no 'dripping wet' liberal , caring more for  offenders than for their victims ,  though one would've thought that a country said to be 90% Buddhist might have a more humane judicial system .
And sadists must queue 'round the block' to work there , which can't be right .
In his book Warren Fellows fully admits his guilt , and , I'd have thought that  six months there would be  an extremely harsh and deterring sentence , never mind nearly twelve years .
I especially pity any innocent person having the misfortune to be incarcerated there .
Having read the book it seems that he somehow 'sleepwalked' into getting caught as if he somehow subconsciously knew that was , for some mysterious reason 'meant' to happen , and , strangely  , his incarceration , suffering and survival were  predicted to him by a very elderly  'fortune teller' woman in India .
He said  he hopes  that if he can persuade even one person that drug-smuggling is'nt worth the risk then that's one good thing resulting from his terrible ordeal .
Heroin especially causes horrendous problems in society which brings us back to : So are unimaginably hellish , hard to survive consequences of trafficking it therefore justifiable  ?
Well , I'd certainly like our (uk) government / police to crack down  harder on dealers enjoying luxury lifestyles at the expense of the desperately miserable existences of addicts , not forgetting any victims of their desparation to get the money for their next 'fix' .
But does anyone , even the most detestably imaginable criminal deserve year upon year of soul and body destroying hell ?
Maybe just a few are so evil that they do but , then again , would'nt 'capital punishment' be so much simpler and cheaper ?
Sorry , not a life-affirming , cheery post but , do give your opinions if you'd like to ~