Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha recently decided police reform was too difficult a task and he would leave it to the next government, even though the Royal Thai Police (RTP) is struggling to retain public confidence.
His attitude follows a series of events concerning the police. Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Barometer notes people view the police as the most tainted group in the Thai public sector, with 71% expressing the sentiment that officers are either corrupt or very corrupt, compared to 68% for political parties and 18% for the judiciary.
In addition, participants in reconciliation seminars have made it clear they want to be protected against police extortion. Moreover, early last month, police chief Pol Gen Somyot Poompanmuang relieved 50 Padang Besar officers of their duties for allegedly tolerating the existence of death camps and human traffickers.
And only last week, in what appears to be a genuine attempt to address the image problem, 11 top police officers responsible for Nakhon Pathom and Police Region 7, including a younger brother of Pol Gen Somyot, were transferred for failing to address a crime wave including the murder of a Special Branch officer at a gambling den.
There are three recognised forms of police corruption: embezzlement of government funds, coercing bribes, and collecting protection money from illegal business operators in sectors such as counterfeit goods and all-night bars. The situation is complicated by the fact the black economy contributes approximately 40% to gross domestic product.
Police reorganisation and justice reform require an overhaul at both the structural level and in terms of increasing professionalism. In essence, the RTP needs to be made fit for its purpose by the National Council for Peace and Order now, before elections and the return of the country to a civilian government to avoid a Catch-22 situation. In the long term, only with police reform can PM Prayut's welcome announcement of a "war on corruption" be enforced.
Structurally, police administration should be decentralised to the provincial, city, and precinct levels rather than district and sub-district police. For example, in New Zealand - which has the lowest police corruption in the world - the police force was separated into 12 precincts and each precinct given powers to employ and promote officers up to inspector level. This resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of officers at the commissioned level, a particular problem for Thailand.
Such decentralisation would then allow local communities to agree on transparent service-level charters between police forces and devolved municipal governments so a campaign against crime hotspots can be funded and targeted.
The same technology that is being used by civil society groups to hold a people's referendum on the draft constitution could be used to host service-level charters and involve the public.
Police salaries need to be improved to act as an incentive to abandon the perpetuation of the shadow economy.
Thai police officers are paid around 14,760 baht per month (6,800–8,340 baht for entry level) and have to buy their own guns and even office supplies.
In a microcosm, the RTP is stuck in the same middle-income trap as the country, with work-related stress causing a suicide rate four times the national average.
In order to improve salaries and motivate officers to convert the shadow economy into a formal one, increasing taxation and fiscal stability, there should be a bonus scheme where a percentage of fines from both traffic tickets and court cases goes directly to the officers, either to their salaries or to the pension fund.
Furthermore, early retirement packages should be introduced, especially for ineffectual officers.
To make the force more professional, the NCPO could start investing in technology such as always-on body cameras and patrol vehicle cameras for front-line police in the Crime Suppression Division.
These should be complemented by centres at the Central Investigation Bureau where the cameras are monitored by civilians. In some police jurisdictions in the West, such as Atlanta, Georgia, there are even pilot projects to stream these body cams online.
Such cameras save money and paperwork by increasing public reassurance, reducing fear of crime, increasing early guilty pleas, resolving complaints about the police more quickly, and reducing the number of attacks on officers.
The world's first systematic scientific survey of the effects of such cameras, by the University of Cambridge, confirmed use of force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% during the pilot year.
Their effectiveness in recording police malfeasance has prompted US President Barack Obama to propose subsidising the purchase of 50,000 body-worn video cameras - as well as the video storage costs - by 50%, heralding a revolution in front-line policing that Thailand also should adopt. These cameras are available commercially for less than 3,400 baht.
One crucial reform which perhaps can only be undertaken by the NCPO, due to the extent to which its jurisdiction and authority have been under political influence, is improved performance of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) under the Ministry of Justice.
The DSI is the Thai equivalent of the US's FBI but has never lived up to the promise of the US equivalent in terms of being able to systematically eliminate the influential and organised crime which lies within its remit as well as police malfeasance that makes impunity possible.
Yet it is clear the DSI, which fights organised and transnational crime, needs to tackle the human trafficking death camps and the overlooking of the recent murder of a Special Branch officer. These are obvious cases where the RTP and the DSI, traditionally rivals as in any state/federal system, should be synergising, perhaps with a foreign agency also observing and serving as an impartial adviser, to develop a working ethos for cooperation through forensics, surveillance technology and dedicated investigation teams.
Peerasit Kamnuansilpa, Phd, is founder and former dean of the College of Local Administration, Khon Kaen University.