Thailand is to make it harder for thieves that are repeat criminals. Normally you get up to 3 years for theft or something similar but now the government want repeat offenders to get up two 17-20 years for the same crime if they are repeat offenders.
The government wants to tuck them away since some of them have been in prison more then 17 times and are still doing the same crime.
On the bright side Thailands prisons are no longer overcrowded so anybody wants to take a few years in the hell home not have to sleep on each other.
In 2003 the Thai prisons had 260,000 but had 2005 shrunken to only 160.000.
The report did not say if that was because Thaksins government shot 2000 of them or if the police just have gotten lazy.