Bored with reality television about Paris Hilton? Then perhaps you're ready for the Bangkok Hilton. At least, that seems to have been the logic behind a bizarre reality show dreamed up by Thailand's Corrections Department. Perhaps buoyed by the success of a recent BBC documentary that for the first time filmed life inside Bang Kwang prison, the notorious 'Big Tiger', Corrections Department director-general Natthee Jitsawang last week announced a show that would be the ultimate Big Brother: 24-hour webcasts and a television programme showing the lives of death row inmates, including their final minutes before execution by lethal injection. When news of the show broke, outrage from human rights groups followed, and Natthee was forced to amend his plans. He says he'll still upload footage from webcams to the Corrections Department's website, but that there won't be any television programme. 'We're not trying to be gratuitous or disrespectful,' he says. 'This is all about deterring murderers and perpetrators of other serious crimes. 'We want the public to have a chance to see what sort of life awaits them behind bars, so they'll think twice before doing something that could land them on death row.' He also denies a report in the mass circulation Thai Rath newspaper that executions would be broadcast live. 'That was never part of the plan,' he says. 'That would be highly disrespectful. The webcasts will follow inmates up until the moment they are strapped to the execution bed, but at that point the broadcast will be terminated.' Of some 7,000 prisoners in Bang Kwang, 883 have been sentenced to death and about 65 inmates, including five women, are awaiting execution. Those 65 will find out the time of their execution only an hour or so before it's scheduled. One Corrections Department source told The Nation newspaper that 60 of the death row inmates were planning to ask the Justice Ministry to cancel the web broadcasts, for fear it would humiliate them and their families. 'We're already going to pay the ultimate price for our crimes,' one prisoner was reported as saying. 'Do they really need to remove our last scrap of dignity, as well?' Justice Ministry deputy permanent secretary Kitti Limchaikij says the television programme would have 'gone against the grain of the law', but he's not sure about the webcasts. 'I think as long as it only shows visiting hours between death row inmates and their relatives, then that's OK. 'But live broadcasts of living conditions in prison and the execution of inmates could not be allowed, as it would violate the constitutional rights of the prisoner,' he says. Natthee, however, denies there's a problem with showing living conditions, and says that will form part of the webcasts. 'It's also a way to make the whole prison system more transparent to the public,' he says. 'This will help erase the prison's image as a 'mysterious zone'. Society can also bear witness to the hard conditions prevailing in prison.'