170 Country Report: Data Visualization
male27
Length of Thailand Prison Sentences, Organized by Sex (2016)
For this project I was interested in looking into Thailand’s incarceration system and examining trends in their prison industrial complex. While there were many datasets to choose from, I wanted to see if there was a difference in the types of crimes committed between males and females as reflected by the length of prison sentences. In total, there were 244,266 people imprisoned in Thailand as of December 1, 2016. Looking at the chart that I created, it is evident that while there is a much larger total population of males that are incarcerated, the rate and longevity of their prison sentences is similar to those of females. There are parallel trends in the sentence lengths, with the ratio remaining relatively consistent between the two sexes.
While researching I discovered that Thailand has “one of the highest prisoner-to-population ratios in the world,” and inmates suffer from harsh rates of overcrowding (Thailand Institute of Justice, 2021). While crime rates have declined over the past couple of decades, the prison population has continued to increase. Rehabilitation efforts have proved to be futile, with approximately a third of released prisoners being re-incarcerated within just a few years. The vast majority (80%) of inmates were incarcerated for drug-related offenses, which carry a sentence between 2-10 years; this information is reflected in the peaks my bar graph.
I organized the data into a comparative (dual) bar chart because I think that it is easiest to visualize the various lengths of prison sentences, while also comparing the data between males and females. While I initially tried to present the data in a vertical chart, it was difficult because there are so many more men than females, and because of that the female bars were extremely hard to see. I also added the specific numbers that were used to create the bar graph at the end of each of the bars, so people are able to see the precise numbers instead of just estimating the amount of people contributing to each of the bars by using the x-axis.
Information obtained from:
- International Federation for Human Rights. (2017). BEHIND THE WALLS, A look at conditions in Thailand’s prisons after the coup. Retrieved March 22, 2022, from https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/58b593dd4.pdf
- Thailand Institute of Justice. (2021). Research on the Causes of Recidivism in Thailand. Retrieved March 22, 2022, from https://knowledge.tijthailand.org/en/publication/detail/research-on-the-causes-of-recidivism-in-thailand#book/25