defeats the main function of the police as a public office charged with the job of providing law and order and maintaining justice in society administrative systems. By Corruption permea Thai the police focusing police, we do not departments such a unique case, and that in other government chosen as a corruption is not important or absent. The police is of public case study because in the opinion survey on the issue was office and corruption (see chapter 5), the Police Department perceived as the most corrupt among all government departments. The ultimate aim of this case study is to find ways to help the police improve their image and become worthy of the sentiments in the police song The historical roots of police corruption The present state of alleged rampant corruption within the police must be understood in the context of the historical environment shaping the police's internal culture and operating practice The police existed since the Ayutthaya period. At that time their main duty was to provide security to the king. Sometimes they were used to patrol the outer fringes of the state. In the early Bangkok period, the police's main function was to marshal king's men (lek and plra) for doing corvée labour and military duty. When this sakdina system of labour control declined in the late nineteenth century, the police force also disappeared. The development of the modern Thai police force began at the turn of the twentieth century. The story may be divided into two first stage runs from the establishment of the new police force in 1897 up to the Second World The second stage extends from the Cold War period to the present day The establishment of the police force was one element of the administrative reforms fashioned by King Chulalongkorn in the late nineteenth century. One of the main purposes of these reforms was to regularize and centralize the system of revenue collection, so as to reduce the leakage into the pockets of tax collectors under the gin mutang system.In the reforms, the king took away the function of taxation from local governors and their krommakan. He replaced these local officials with men nted and controlled from Bangkok. new were paid a regular and were no longer supposed to obtain their income from a percentage of the taxes they collected. The reforms met with strong resistance, both from the people who had to pay higher taxes in cash, and from the krommakan who used to benefit from the old system. Governors and krommakan often reacted by encouraging local toughs and robbers to create disturbances. Ordinary peasants revolted against the new taxation system. Thus immediately after the reforms, the government in Bangkok had to counter various types of local disturbances in faraway provinces. government was not According to a study by Viwanna, the greatly concerned about the difficulties this lawlessness inflicted the people. It was more concerned that local disturbances would provide a pretext for the British or the French to intervene in Thai affairs and annex territory in the name of restoring lav and order. In 1888 and 1895 Thailand had to give up claims to sovereignty over territory on the east side of the Mekong River to France, and along the Salween River in the northwest to Britain. The colonial power used robbery and banditry as pretext to take over the territory on grounds of restoring law and order for the local people and for the smooth running of their businesses (particularly the British teak concessions in the north). The fear that increases in local disturbances would lead t more such incidents led the government to set up a Polic Department in 1897. The police was to be used first to control local influential men (governors and their gangs), second to an extension of the government arm in the provin administration, and third to fend off colonial intrusion. Viwanna concluded that the original purpose of the polic force was first and foremost the maintenance of national security From the beginning the police was created as an suppress the government in power and to enhan the central government's interests. The police's fun safeguard the community was a secondary consideration