Continuing our series on overlooked people in society, we talk to three former convicts. They share stories about living behind bars and the difficulties of enjoying freedom again
Sawang
Sawang* was sentenced to death, but it was later reduced to life imprisonment. After 19 years, eight months and 27 days, he was released in 2009. He counted the exact days because the time he spent in jail, he said, he spent paying for a murder he didn't commit.
A free man for six years, the nightmare of him languishing behind bars is still vivid on some nights when he goes to sleep.
"I was in prison for a long time," said Sawang. "There is no way that I could forget what went on inside that place."
Sawang was the newly-appointed vice-principal of a school in Chachoengsao when he was convicted of kidnapping and murder. In Bang Kwang Central Prison, the country's most notorious, he got past each day with shackles on his ankles believing that dying was much easier.
But one day in prison he got to write, by chance, a plea for a helpless convict using a smattering of knowledge of the law he had studied in college. Before long, Sawang became one of the most sought-after men in Bang Kwang, known for his ability in writing pleas for freedom. Helping others kept him alive.
"A lot of convicts came to me for help," Sawang said. "It helped calm me. In prison, the scariest thing was my own thoughts because there was no hope and no future. I had no idea when I was going to be out. Busying myself with work day by day was the only way that I could forget about it all."
But it was never easy and Sawang said he almost didn't make it. His 17th year was the hardest one, when he became paranoid and unable to control himself, and almost had a breakdown.
"Nineteen years is too long, too long for a prisoner to come out and still find himself balanced," he said. "It was too long for many to come out and still have someone waiting for them. Many of them didn't have anybody to go to afterwards."
For that, Sawang considers himself lucky. His parents and relatives were doing well and looked forward to welcoming him back home. After he was freed, he went back to live with his parents for a long while, then got married. Now 59, with a four-year-old son and a wife, who's a nurse, Sawang stays at home, taking care of the child and planting trees to sell.
Being back in the same town where everything happened with many people still remembering the case and some being ambivalent, Sawang chooses to ignore this and enjoy his life as much as he can.
"When I came out, I still felt that there was an ill-feeling from some people around me," Sawang said. "I didn't try to change anything. I just focused on people who were ready to open up to me. I became self-sufficient and learned to be happy with my family. Just the three of us. If there is anything I can do for them, I will do it without being picky, even if it means washing my wife's clothes.
"When I was in prison, I never really had a dream of what life would be like when I came out. Apart from experiencing the darkness, I was also traumatised by society, the people who did this to me. I was probably not like others who went to jail because they had done something wrong; I knew that I didn't do it. Being dragged into the whole thing, I was really afraid. But now that I'm out, I'm not afraid anymore."
Sampao
Born and raised in Nonthaburi, Sampao* would walk past Bang Kwang every day after school, and always wondered what life was like on the inside. Little did he know that he would spend more than a decade inside from 19-years-old. Convicted of a joint enterprise murder, Sampao was sentenced to life in prison.
Curling himself to sleep in a cramped room, washing his body from a trough with other inmates, and skimping on toothpaste in case his family forgot to transfer money, he felt like a kid lost in a different world.
But after 12 years and six months, he was released on parole last year. And the 33-year-old thanks imprisonment for giving him a new life, turning him from a vocational school hoodlum to what he calls a "decent human being".
"For some people, going to jail means that their lives are over," Sampao said. "For me, life started in jail. It was the turning point. It made me see what is right and wrong. It made me learn the meaning of life and taught me to appreciate my parents. People have told me that I grew up in prison and I never rejected that.
"At first, I was devastated. But now I feel like I had been on a trip to a place where I got to study a subject that equipped me with fortitude. After I was released, I still saw some of my old friends stuck at the same place where I had been." In Bang Kwang, not only did Sampao learn a life lesson he wouldn't find anywhere else, he also earned a bachelor's degree in law from Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, which provides education to prisoners.
When Sampao was released, with his family and friends picking him up, he found himself in a different world. He watched the news in prison, but psychologically the way things had changed caught him by surprise.
"At first, I was very clumsy," Sampao said. "Not because there was anyone looking at me like I had been a prisoner. But I was just not used to the way people live now -- like the way people kept looking at their phones. I felt like a character from a movie who shows up in a different era."
Sometimes when he saw students in vocational school uniforms, he couldn't help but think for a second that some of them could be his old enemies -- before realising that 12 years had past and the students he saw were much younger than him. "I would forget for a second that I wasn't a student anymore," Sampao said.
"It's really like that. No matter what age someone goes into prison, when he comes out he will feel the same. If you go in when you are 30 and come out at 50, you would still feel that you are 30."
Sampao lived with his parents for a while because they didn't want him to do anything that would jeopardise his parole.
But as he didn't want his father, who is a motorcycle taxi driver, to solely support him, he became a construction foreman in Khao Yai.
He hopes to be able to make use of his law degree in the future.
Sampao is trying his best to move forward. But it is difficult to forget the wrong he has done, he said.
"There are always things that remind me of the past," Sampao said. "Seeing them, I go back. But there is nothing that I can do about it. It has already passed.
"I have to let it go. Every now and then, I make merit for the dead.
"Sometimes, I feel guilty too but I don't intend to keep that feeling with me all the time.
"I have lost a lot of time already.
"I want to focus on building a new life and making my parents live comfortably. For now, this is all I'm concerned about."
Kwan
Kwan* was a grandmother when she was arrested for a drug delivery. Her family had no idea what the 47-year-old wife and mother had been doing until she called them from the police station. All she hoped was that her family understood what she did was for their sake.
Kwan's husband was a truck driver and she was his back seat driver. Her 20-year-old son was jobless and when he had a baby things only got worse. The grandmother became desperate and decided to deliver drugs to make some extra cash.
"I thought it was the right solution," Kwan said. "Because we were very poor, I couldn't make my son happy. I thought it was the only way to make his girlfriend's family accept him. I needed to do something for him."
Nevertheless, Kwan's illegal stint lasted less than a year. Arrested carrying 4,000 amphetamine tablets, she was sentenced to a 25-year jail term at Central Women's Correctional Institution. However her sentence was reduced and 10 years and six months later, she was released in 2013.
"I couldn't blame it on anyone," Kwan said. "I did it to myself. Going to jail was like a mandatory thing without a solution to it. Once I was inside, I didn't have the right to whine about the outside world. I just had to try to live. All I thought was how I was going to keep myself afloat until the end."
From working hard on different assigned duties to doing yoga, Kwan dreamed of making it out of prison as a changed, strong woman who was set to start afresh with a new job. However, her dream was shattered when she became sick with septicaemia but received improper care from the doctors in prison, and now doesn't keep good health.
As she neared the end of her sentence, fearing her deteriorating health would be a burden to her children and being accustomed to life behind bars, Kwan was hesitant to enter the outside world.
It has been two years since her release and she is recovering from two operations. At 60, she has only just got back on her feet and supports herself by laundering linen for hotels in Prachuap Khiri Khan. She wishes prisons paid more attention to prisoners who are sick.
"Prisoners hope to exit prison as changed people," Kwan said. "But for that to happen, the prison has to make them ready, not hasten to ignore them when they are sick.
"I think if somebody can change this, the life of prisoners will be better."
Whenever Kwan has a chance, she likes to share her experience with others. She wants her experience to remind people to live a lawful life.
And while Kwan has no idea what lies ahead, she knows she is surrounded by the people she loves.
"For now, happiness is being with my family," Kwan said.
"I'm slowly getting used to the outside world, each day.
"However, sometimes I still miss the prison. My friends are still in it. They like to write to me, asking me what it is like being out of prison and living on the outside."
* All names have been changed to protect identities.
