Abstract:
The objectives of this research were to study development of access to justice for the poor in Thailand and to delineate factors related with such access and to analyze the problems and obstacles in access to justice for the poor in a Thailand. Four hundred people who asked for legal assistance from public legal aid units in eight provinces as declared as chronic poverty areas in Thailand were the sample, and twenty-five government officials in such public legal aid units were the key informants in this study. The questionnaire and structural interviewing guidelines were the tools for data collection. The statistical analysis through Chi-Square and content analysis with a descriptive approach were the methods in delineating, the results, as follows: 1.) As for the personal data, the sample was mostly male, aged between 31-40 years of age and married with bachelor degrees and doing agricultural work. They had been living in the area more than twenty years, total family income below ten thousands baht per month, and had problems in land and civil cases. 2.) The factors involved in access to justice for the poor included the concrete policy, cooperative action from the private sector, knowledge and understanding of the operation of legal cases, quality of the lawyer in the case including the legal aid network of the people. 3) In terms of problems and obstacles in access to justice for the poor, in addition to the general problems on case delay, there were still travel barriers in the downtown areas, many aspects, lack of knowledge of the legal process continuity, lack of standard legal aid, the financial, including lack of legal case host and public legal assistance, remain unmet needs of poor people. 4) Recommendations from this study were to continuously train on legal knowledge to meet needs of the people in each area, determine the legal aid as pro bono for the senior lawyers, coordination among the related agencies for the speed of trials, setting up an main responsible official in each case clearly, design and planning the all-end process of the case and making the poor knowledgeable, making the related data base which eases access for the general public, and making the handbooks. The proposal for a future research study should be done in information technology systems for access to legal data in an easy way, the participation of the private sector in access to justice for the poor, and another study should focus on a survey of needs of the poor for legal aid.