28
July
2017
|
15:29
Asia/Singapore

Offender reintegration a communal responsibility

Social Service Research (SSR) Centre and Next Age Institute (NAI) at NUS Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) organised SSR-NAI Conference 2017 on 27 July, focusing on the theme “Innovative Approaches in Community and Institutional Rehabilitation of Offenders”. Mr Desmond Lee, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Home Affairs and National Development, graced the occasion as Guest-of-Honour.

In his opening speech, Mr Lee spoke of the importance of rehabilitation and opined that it should begin much further upstream while extending further downstream throughout the offender lifecycle. “By delivering more targeted rehabilitative support upstream, we can divert offenders from re-offending as early as possible,” he explained.

He also made the point that rehabilitation must be viewed as a collective community responsibility to achieve better outcomes for ex-offenders and their families. “To help ex-offenders stay crime-free, we have to work harder and collaborate even more closely to address the larger social and economic challenges,” said Mr Lee.

An expert in social policy and statistics, Professor Paul Cheung, Chairman, Steering Committee, Social Service Research Centre at FASS, has been involved in research on recidivism and the criminal justice system. In his welcome address, Prof Cheung highlighted a recent trend in prisons — an increase in the number of elderly inmates — and questioned whether harsh sentencing and long jail terms would serve as an effective deterrent for this group of offenders.

There is a pattern to crime, and that pattern is to be understood along the lines of social class, race and ethnicity. We have to go beyond that deficit-based narrative and to understand and to contextualise criminal behaviours.

Sharing one of the objectives of the conference, Associate Professor Narayanan Ganapathy, Chairman, SSR-NAI Conference 2017; and Assistant Dean (Graduate Studies) at FASS; said, “I think it’s so important to bring academicians, practitioners and institutional researchers onto a platform such as this to have cross communication about what works and why it works in certain historical cultural contexts, and to share some of the best practices which are done elsewhere and how some of these practices could be adopted and adapted to the Singaporean context.”

Commissioner of Prisons, Singapore Prison Service (SPS) Mr Desmond Chin gave the keynote speech, highlighting the changes which SPS had put in place over the years and how it leveraged technology. Through “Prison Without Guards” for example, the staff use data analytics to better identify inmates’ risks and needs, while routine tasks such as taking attendance are automated, allowing staff to engage with inmates more meaningfully. “Our technology cannot replace officers because we’re in the people business but it can certainly enable our officers to do their work more effectively,” he added.

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Members of the audience took to the floor to gain further insight from the panellists

One of the panel discussions, titled “In-care Intervention and Preparation for Life Beyond Institutions”, saw Assoc Prof Ganapathy touching on the necessity of paying attention to social and structural dimensions when managing offender reintegration. “There is a pattern to crime, and that pattern is to be understood along the lines of social class, race and ethnicity. We have to go beyond that deficit-based narrative and to understand and to contextualise criminal behaviours,” he expounded. The panel discussion ended with a lively question-and-answer session facilitated by Dr Ong Qiyan, Deputy Director (Research) at SSR Centre.

More than 250 leaders and experts from academia and public service attended the Conference, which was supported by the Singapore Prison Service and the Ministry of Social and Family Development.

See media coverage.