# PleadOrMax > Thailand's Justice System: Plead Guilty or Face the Maximum — a clinical, data-driven > advocacy site documenting structural problems in Thailand's criminal justice system > using aggregate public statistics and sourced journalism. PleadOrMax is an editorial-advocacy site that examines how Thailand's criminal-justice mechanics — a statutory 50% plea discount (Thai Criminal Code §78), prolonged pretrial detention, extreme speech-offence maxima, and foreign-funded anti-trafficking sting operations — structurally push accused persons toward guilty pleas regardless of actual guilt. Every figure is drawn from primary sources: the WJP Rule of Law Index 2024, the World Prison Brief (December 2024), FIDH/UCL Annual Prison Reports, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), and the US State Department Trafficking in Persons Reports. The site operates on aggregate data only. No individual names, cases, or personal allegations appear anywhere on the site by design. ## Pages - [Home](https://pleadormax.com/) — Overview of the four structural mechanics driving coerced confessions: §78 plea discount, pretrial detention, speech-offence maxima, and foreign-funded trafficking cases. - [Plead-or-Max Simulator](https://pleadormax.com/simulator) — Interactive tool: select a Thai offence, see the statutory maximum, the §78 half-sentence plea reduction, and a 0–100 risk-of-fighting score. - [Cost-of-Defence Calculator](https://pleadormax.com/cost) — User-input calculator. Plug in lawyer fees, lost wages, family-visit travel, and expected remand months; see three scenarios side by side in THB: fight-and-acquit, fight-and-convict, plead-early. No fabricated fee figures — defaults come only from sourced public data. - [Sentencing Comparator](https://pleadormax.com/comparator) — Side-by-side statutory maxima for Thailand versus six better-WJP-ranked systems (Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Singapore) and four regional peers (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia) across ten offence categories. Cells that could not be verified against a primary source are shown as N/A rather than guessed. - [Section 112 (Lèse-majesté)](https://pleadormax.com/sec112) — The Thai lèse-majesté statute explained: how three-to-fifteen years stacks per message, why the cumulative record is 50 years, and why the conviction rate sits at 79%. Cites TLHR, FIDH, Bangkok Post, CNN. - [Bail and Pretrial Detention](https://pleadormax.com/bail) — Why bail in Thailand is the structural lever that turns the §78 plea discount into a coerced confession. Routine bail-denial categories, Thai minimum-wage context (330–363 THB/day), and the 22.5% unconvicted-inmate share. - [Trafficking Conviction Industry](https://pleadormax.com/trafficking) — How US Tier-system pressure and foreign-funded sting operations (The Exodus Road, IJM, OUR) produce Thailand's trafficking convictions — documented through journalism, court filings, and on-the-record expert quotes. - [Justice Scorecard](https://pleadormax.com/scorecard) — Compiled metrics: WJP 2024 rank (#78 of 142), prison occupancy (111.7%), pretrial share (22.5%), §112 conviction rate (79%), and the 50-year record cumulative sentence. - [Data Dashboard](https://pleadormax.com/dashboard) — Charted time-series: prison population 2020–2024, pretrial vs. convicted share, capacity vs. occupancy, and drug-offence dominance (~73% of all inmates). - [Reform Proposals](https://pleadormax.com/reform) — Nine concrete reforms across five areas: plea bargaining, pretrial detention, speech offences, public defence, and sentencing transparency. - [Updates](https://pleadormax.com/updates) — Short posts each time a primary source publishes a fresh Thai justice-system figure. Each post cites the underlying report and emits `schema.org/NewsArticle` JSON-LD. - [World Prison Brief — Thailand, December 2024 snapshot](https://pleadormax.com/updates/wpb-2024-review) — WPB Dec 2024 aggregate figures: 277,475 inmates, 111.7% occupancy, 22.5% pretrial, 73% drug-offence share. - [2025 US TIP Report — Thailand Tier 2, fourth year running](https://pleadormax.com/updates/tip-report-2025) — 360 trafficking convictions in 2024; the Tier system incentive structure. - [§112 prosecutions — TLHR April 2024 aggregate snapshot](https://pleadormax.com/updates/sec112-snapshot-2026) — 272 individuals charged across 303 cases; 79% conviction rate; 50-year record. ## Reference - [Glossary](https://pleadormax.com/glossary) — Plain-language definitions of the legal and statistical terms used across the site: §78, §79, §112, lèse-majesté, pretrial remand, bail, plea reduction, statutory maximum, WJP Rule of Law Index, Court of First Instance, judicial diversion, Computer-Related Crime Act. - [FAQ](https://pleadormax.com/faq) — Common questions with sourced answers: why so many defendants plead guilty, how long pretrial detention runs, what §112 is, can a foreigner get bail, how Thai sentences compare internationally. - [Methodology](https://pleadormax.com/methodology) — Every source on the site catalogued by topic, plus a detailed "what we exclude and why" section (no individual-case analysis, no fabricated sub-factor scores, no per-offence remand estimates, no off-the-record allegations). - [If you're foreign](https://pleadormax.com/foreign) — What changes when a foreign national is arrested in Thailand: Vienna Convention Article 36 consular-notification rights, visa status during pretrial remand, prisoner-transfer treaties with the US (1982), UK (1990), Australia (2002), Canada (2002), the right to an interpreter (Thai CPC §13), and the practical limits of embassy support. - [Press kit](https://pleadormax.com/press) — Downloadable CSV datasets underneath every figure: Thai offence catalogue, the 11-country comparator matrix, prison-population time-series, and every headline figure with its source URL. Chart PNGs on request via press@pleadormax.com. ## Data feeds - [Updates RSS](https://pleadormax.com/updates/rss.xml) — RSS 2.0 feed of the update posts, refreshed on every deploy. - [Headline figures JSON](https://pleadormax.com/api/data/headline-figures) — Every headline statistic on the site with source URL. Cache-Control: 1h. Permissive CORS. - [Comparator JSON](https://pleadormax.com/api/data/comparators) — 11-country statutory-maxima matrix. - [Thai crimes JSON](https://pleadormax.com/api/data/thai-crimes) — Offence catalogue with statute references. - [Prison population JSON](https://pleadormax.com/api/data/prison-population) — Current + time-series. ## Site meta - [About](https://pleadormax.com/about) — Mission, editorial stance, funding. - [Contact](https://pleadormax.com/contact) — Press / corrections / data enquiries. - [Privacy](https://pleadormax.com/privacy) — What data the site collects (GA4, RUM, server logs) and how to opt out. ## Optional - [Full content for LLM ingestion](https://pleadormax.com/llms-full.txt) — Substantive prose for each page, with statistics, citations, and reform proposals verbatim. - [Sitemap](https://pleadormax.com/sitemap.xml) — Machine-readable list of all routes.