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Behind bars

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The recent surge in Covid-19 cases reported by Thai authorities has revealed staggering numbers of infected inmates. Hundreds of prisoners are falling sick each day, with nearly 15,000 reported inmate infections as of Sunday.

Last Monday, more than 70 per cent of the day’s 9,635 new coronavirus cases were attributed to infected inmates in eight correctional facilities. The same day, Thai officials said nearly half the prisoners at eight sites had tested positive for Covid-19. In one Bangkok prison, two-thirds have the virus.

Throughout this global pandemic, congregate settings like nursing homes, dormitories, or simply the crowded homes of the poorest, have always been the site of high infection rates. But given the overcrowding, underfunding, and size of the inmate population in many nations, prisons pose a unique challenge. Locked away out of sight and politically easy to ignore, inmates across the world have caught the coronavirus at disproportionately high rates. In the US, one in five inmates tested positive for Covid-19—a rate four times higher that of the general population, according to research from The Marshall Project. In the UK, a prisoner was three times more likely to die of Covid-19 than anyone outside.

Amid the surge, Thailand is considering early releases for 50,000 inmates, about 13 per cent of its prison population. The Office of the Judiciary has also announced changes in bail procedures, something that could lead to a large drop in a prison system where 20 per cent of inmates are in pretrial detention. As for vaccines, the government announced all inmates will be vaccinated started next month. But given the painfully slow speed of Thailand’s vaccine rollout, that will likely take some time.

Like Thailand, neighbouring Cambodia has severely overcrowded prisons and judicial approaches that have long drawn the ire of human rights groups. So it might come as a surprise to learn how rapidly the courts and prisons responded to an outbreak at Preah Sihanouk provincial prison earlier this month. After 34 inmates tested positive for Covid-19 at the southern coast prison, officials quarantined them, moved women to a different prison, reallocated their wing for the elderly and minors, and gave early release to those nearing the end of their sentences. Officials also immediately began vaccinating every inmate in the country. Late last week, 18 inmates tested positive for Covid-19 at Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, the country’s largest. Worrying as that is, by the time they fell ill, all but 200 of the more than 10,000 inmates had received their first vaccine dose—vastly reducing the chances of catastrophe. In Preah Sihanouk, meanwhile, there have since been no new cases.

Earlier this year, as the fourth coronavirus wave swept the US, The New York Times Magazine ran a moving account written by an inmate in a prison where Covid was spreading. ‘Even as people on the outside were required to wear face coverings indoors, Sing Sing’s roughly 1,300 prisoners, not provided with masks, had to walk around barefaced or make do with handkerchiefs,’ recounted John J. Lennon. As Thailand battles its latest wave, it would do well to learn from the mistakes—and successes—of other nations.

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From the archives

Homing pigeon

 By Emily Ding

I know a friend who visits McDonald’s in every country he travels to. In doing so, he hopes that some nuance about each place will reveal itself, some nuance that lies in the difference between a McDonald’s that serves nasi lemak burger and a McDonald’s that serves McAloo tikki burger. The differences in the pedestrian, rather than the extraordinary, are more telling, right?

I get it. I have a similar ritual: I go to Chinatown.

Late last year, I was in Kolkata’s old Chinatown — a city centre commercial quarter known as Tiretti Bazaar — to research a story about India’s shrinking Chinese community. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kolkata had been the gateway to the subcontinent for new immigrants who came by sea, and the Chinese here represent the bulk of their settled population in the country.

I was taking pictures at Gee Hing, the only Chinese social club in the area that still gets mahjong games going, when a Chinese uncle came up to me. He looked bemused. “You’re a Chinese from Malaysia? Surely you have mahjong at home?”

We do. But it’s the idea of “Chinatown” I’m interested in.

Read the full essay, from the April 2019 issue, here.
 

Eat it:

Meticulously researched and exceptionally beautiful, the two-year-old Cambodian cookbook Nhum, written by chef Rotanak Ros and photographed by Nataly Lee, finally became available in Australia and the US. The book provides a rare culinary history of a oft-overlooked cuisine. Check out a recipe for chicken with young jackfruit, or learn more about the book here.

 

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