He said there are about 320,000 inmates nationwide but just 14,000 prison officials. Of those officials, only 1,300 are guards, Narat said.

As a result, the government has approved 3,000 posts for prison guards and the Corrections Department has trained three new classes of prison guard.

The Corrections chief said the current prisons are crowded so the government has allocated money in the department’s budget to build two or three more prisons a year.