Singapore is a country with many characteristics that seem contrary to those seen as contributing to high crime rates. It has a low unemployment rate; 3.5% of the eligible population in 2006 was unemployed (Singstat on Key Household Income Trends, 2007)). Drug trading here is met with harsh legislation (Traffickers can easily face the death penalty) and law enforcement. There is a growing income inequality gap but only a small fraction of citizens here can actually be said to lack basic needs. In a country with 4 million people and a high population density, 2006 saw 17 murder cases, 118 rape cases, and 361 rioting cases (Singapore Police Force on Index Crimes, 2006), numbers that are small when taken from a statistical perspective. From 2005 to 2007, there have been reductions in the number of crime cases recorded by the Singapore police force. However, as good as this record appears to be, I feel that certain aspects of Singapore as a society continue to act as structural influences towards crime, and this is manifested in cases of outrage of modesty, and thefts by youths. I will elaborate using these two examples.
Reported outrage of modesty cases in 2006 amounted to 1280 cases. One in four of these cases took place at common HDB block areas such as lifts, staircases/staircase landings, and void decks. Except for void decks, these are small, confined areas out of immediate public view. All of these places share the characteristic of being unattended by adults for the larger part of the day. Girls who are schooling are likely to be targeted as they return home at hours where most adults are away at work, and this supports the idea that the increasing distances between work, leisure, and residence have created more opportunities for criminals to prey on lone individuals who have no passers-by to help them. There is also less security in the sense that the presence of a strongly-knit community is absent; adults working for most part of the day and resting in the night are unlikely to form strong ties with block mates, not even their next-door neighbors. People find themselves isolated in this way, in spite of the huge number of people living in their immediate vicinity.
Shop thefts make up roughly 29% of all youth crime cases (1,260 out of 4,280 arrests). Singaporean youths do not enter shops to steal bags of rice or other essentials for living; they often take small items that are non-essential to basic living, ranging from cheap items like stationery to expensive items such as bags or hand phones. If their reason for stealing is not one of economic need, then other factors must be considered. The personal thrill of the act of stealing is one reason, but in the larger context of society it can be suggested that a culture that connects material possessions with self-worth drives youths to take risks of breaking the law in order to possess the same things that their more affluent peers do.
Materialistic and individualistic orientations are strong influences on crime in Singapore; white-collar crimes are a growing phenomenon here, and often they are committed by people who are already in strong financial positions. Singapore may now be dealing with wider and more pervasive manifestations of its culture in crime as well as other forms, and that may be a challenge that the government is ill-equipped to deal with in the years to come.
Reference list
Singapore Police Force on Index Crime. (2006). Statistics on Index Crimes, 2006. Retrieved on 7 September 2008 from http://www.spf.gov.sg/stats/stats2006_youtharrests.htm
Statistics Singapore on Income Indicators. (2007). Key Household Income Trends, (2007). Retrieved on 7 September 2008 from http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/papers/people/op-s14.pdf
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment