DISCUSSING EARLY RELEASE PROGRAMMES IN SINGAPOREINTRODUCTION
The Singapore Prison Service (SPS) has undergone tremendous transformation over the lastten years. Beyond just rehabilitating oﬀenders, we have also focused our eﬀorts on helping them torenew and restart their lives as productive citizens, who add value to their families and society. SPS
recognised that preparation for an oﬀenderʼs re-integration back to society starts from the onset ofincarceration. Hence, a rehabilitation framework was introduced for a throughcare approach to beadopted towards preparing offenders for their return to the community. Not only are the offenders
prepared for re-integration, concurrent efforts are also carried out to increase awareness andacceptance of oﬀenders by their families and the community, thus preparing them for the oﬀendersʼ
eventual release.

SPS REHABILITATION FRAMEWORK2.
SPSʼ rehabilitation framework (see Figure 1 below), which sets out the rehabilitative
programmes that offenders go though at each incarceration stage, is premised upon the operating
philosophy that a seamless throughcare approach is necessary for the rehabilitation of oﬀenders andtheir subsequent reintegration back into community.

Figure 1: SPS Rehabilitation Framework3.
In order to prepare offenders for reintegration, they undergo various programmes during
their period of incarceration. SPS introduced the classification system, using the Level of Service
Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) as an assessment tool, to assess the risks and needs of each oﬀender upon
his admission. The oﬀender would then be accorded speciﬁc treatment programmes based on his levelof risks and needs. During the in-care phase, a personal route map is required to be charted for eachoﬀender to determine his speciﬁc treatment needs required during his incarceration.
4.
After an oﬀenderʼs personal route map is charted, programmes that will address his treatment
needs and enhance his reintegration potential will be accorded to him. SPS adopts a holistic approachin enhancing an oﬀenderʼs reintegration potential. Education and vocational training equip oﬀenders
with knowledge and skills. Work therapy gives opportunity for oﬀenders to inculcate positive work
habits, attitudes and responsibility. Specialised treatment programmes target the oﬀendersʼ speciﬁc219

criminogenic needs. The engagement of the families and community also start immediately uponadmission of the offenders to ensure that family ties are not severely strained by imprisonment.
Families are engaged through regular visits and family focused programmes. Volunteers from religiousorganisations and voluntary welfare organisations are also engaged to come into prison to befriend
oﬀenders and counsel them.
5.
The transition from a highly controlled prison environment to the life outside prison wallsis a big one. Hence, during the half-way care phase, early release programmes, with follow-up andsupervision in the community, play an essential role to prepare inmates for gradual reintegration intocommunity. Thus far, about 18,000 oﬀenders have been emplaced on the various schemes in CBP and
the completion rate is about 95%. CBP will be discussed in greater detail in the next section.
6.
SPS acknowledges the difficulties faced by ex-offenders in seeking to reintegrate back into
the community. With the help of community partners, SPS has put in place a support structure for
ex-offenders upon their release. Aftercare managers from Singapore After-Care Association andSingapore Anti-Narcotics Association are assigned to guide and help source for services requiredby ex-oﬀenders for up to 6 months under the Case Management Framework. Services from various
agencies include ﬁnancial assistance, employment assistance and accommodation arrangement.

COMMUNITY BASED PROGRAMMES
7.
Incarceration punishes not just the oﬀender but also the family. The prison environment is also
a highly artiﬁcial one that does not adequately prepare an oﬀender for life outside the prison walls.
For successful rehabilitation and reintegration to take place, it must be carried out in the community
and with the support of the community. Hence, rather than directly releasing an oﬀender without any
strong support network, Community Based Programmes (CBP) serve to provide a gradated approach
towards reintegration of an oﬀender.
8.
The spirit of CBP is to allow suitable oﬀenders to serve the tail-end of their sentence in thecommunity and also to involve the community, especially the oﬀendersʼ families, in their rehabilitation
and reintegration. For oﬀenders who do not have supportive families, the help of halfway houses isenlisted to provide a caring and conducive environment for gradual reintegration. There are various
CBP that offenders can undergo, namely, the Home Detention (HD) Scheme, the Work Release
Scheme (WRS) and the Halfway House Schemes.
9.

The following is a brief description of the various CBP:a.

Work Release Scheme (WRS)
The Community Supervision Centre (CSC) is a work release camp operated by SPS whichhouses suitable offenders at the tail-end of their sentence. These offenders will work duringthe day and return to the CSC after work. The CSC also functions as a reporting centre foroﬀenders who are on other community-based programmes. Oﬀenders with supportive families
will subsequently be allowed to return home towards the end of the WRS.

b.

Halfway House Schemes
Oﬀenders of lower risk are emplaced on this scheme and will stay in halfway houses during
the tail-end of their sentence. At the halfway houses, the offenders are engaged in work andtreatment programmes. The halfway houses also serve to provide a conducive environment forreintegration of oﬀenders without supportive families.

c.

Home Detention (HD) Scheme
Some low-risk oﬀenders are allowed to serve the tail-end of their sentence at home where220

their families provide a warm and supportive environment for the offendersʼ re-integration.
Oﬀenders would either be engaged in work or pursue academic studies while on the HD scheme.
Electronic tagging and monitoring is a mandatory component of the HD scheme. Random
reporting at the Community Supervision Centre may also be required of the oﬀenders.
10.
To ensure that only suitable offenders are emplaced on CBP and for them to successfullycomplete CBP, SPS has in place a three-prong approach towards the placement and supervision ofoﬀenders on CBP, namely:a.

A thorough selection process;b.

Preparation at Pre-emplacement Centre;c.

Community Supervision.

Thorough Selection Process11.
All penal oﬀenders upon admission are screened for eligibility for placement on one of the CBP.
The eligibility screening is based on the criteria stipulated in the legislation.
12.
Thereafter, the offender is assessed for suitability for placement on the CBP by PrisonOﬃcers of the institution in which he is housed. Principal considerations when assessing an oﬀenderʼs suitability are his likelihood of re-offending, propensity towards violence, sexual deviance, risk
to society and his level of family support. The offenderʼs responses towards rehabilitation during
incarceration and general conduct in prison are also taken into consideration.
13.
SPS also introduced the tool, Singapore Prisons Short Risk Scale 1 (SPSRS), to predict anoﬀenderʼs probability of re-oﬀending. Oﬀenders with a high risk of re-oﬀending would usually not be
considered for emplacement. For those who have known drug abuse history, an additional tool, theDrug Composite Scale2 (DCS) would be administered to ascertain the offenderʼs risk of going backto drugs. In addition, psychologists from SPSʼ Psychological and Counselling Services Branch would
further assess the suitability of those who have exhibited violent and/or sexual tendencies.
14.
The Programme Placement Panel (PPP), comprising the Superintendent of the prison as theChairman, and other relevant oﬃcers, convenes monthly to discuss all eligible cases for placement onCBP. Thereafter the cases are forwarded to an Advisory Committee (formed by reputed members ofpublic) for consideration. Director of Prisons then endorses the emplacement of the oﬀenders, on therecommendations of the Advisory Committee.

Preparation at Pre-Emplacement Centre

15.
Oﬀenders recommended for placement will then be transferred to the pre-emplacement centre
one month before his date of emplacement. At the pre-emplacement centre, he will undergo a series ofprogrammes to prepare him for re-integration.
16.
The Rebuilding Lives Programme, comprising family intervention and other relapse prevention
modules, is administered to offenders during the pre-emplacement phase. The objectives are (i) toprepare oﬀenders going on CBP and their families adequately for their eventual reunion by equippingthem with the relevant skills and knowledge; (ii) aid the oﬀenders and their families in coping withthe various issues and stressors during their emplacement on CBP, e.g. eﬀective communication at1
2

The Singapore Prison Short Risk Scale (SPSRS) is a locally-normed tool derived from the Level of Service
Inventory - Revised used to estimate risk of general re-oﬀending. It contains 9 items of both historical and dynamicfactors.
The Drug Composite Scale (DCS) is a tool used to estimate the risk of drug relapse for drug users. The score iscalculated from the SPSRS, the Drug Abuse Screening Test, Drug Taking Conﬁdence Questionaire and Social
Desirability Scale, some of which are locally derived scales.

221home; (iii) rebuild or enhance the oﬀendersʼ relationships with their families; and (iv) equip oﬀenders
with relapse prevention skills. With this programme booster, we seek to enhance the chances of theseoffenders successfully completing their CBP as well as reintegrating to society as responsible andcontributing citizens after their full release.
17.
Apart from the Rebuilding Lives programme, the oﬀenders are also put through foundational
skills training to enhance their employability and job-preparedness upon their release. These
programmes include the Employability Skills training, interview skills and resum? writing, and basic
IT skills training. At the pre-emplacement centre, potential employers will also be invited to conduct
job vacancies briefing and job placement exercises to ensure that the offender is employed uponplacement on CBP.

Community Supervision

18.
Upon the placement of an offender on CBP, the Community Supervision Centre (CSC)
undertakes his supervision throughout the placement period. Under the CSC structure, prison oﬃcers
who traditionally perform their roles within a prison setting, now take on the role of Reintegration
Officers and they perform multi-faceted roles in the community. This ranges from reintegrative
functions such as liaison with inmatesʼ families and community partners, engaging inmates in regulardialogues, to supervision and disciplinary roles such as conducting work site visits, halfway house
visits and handling minor violations of regulations.
19.
In order to ensure that the Reintegration Officers know their offenders prior to theiremplacement on CBP, the oﬃcers engage the oﬀenders one month prior to their emplacement in the
pre-emplacement centre. Information and knowledge of these oﬀenders would also be handed over by
the oﬃcers looking after the oﬀenders during the in-care phase to the reintegration oﬃcers throughcase conferences. As such, the knowledge and rapport built up over time is carried over into thecommunity supervision phase.

STATISTICS PERTAINING TO CBP320.
The completion rates of oﬀenders who had undergone CBP had been healthy, being generally
maintained above 80% for the last 5 years (see Table 2 below). The healthy rates of completion
enjoyed by SPS could be partially attributed to the relatively stringent criteria for emplacement onCBP. Going forward, a challenge for SPS would be to allow more inmates to beneﬁt from a period ofplacement on CBP prior to release, whilst maintaining the completion rates at a healthy level.
Table 2: Completion Rates for various CBP for 2004 - 2008
CBP

Completion Rate for Year / %
2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

HD

98.7

96.0

96.7

98.3

98.5

RS

97.1

100.0

100.0

88.2

89.5

WRS-HWH

93.6

84.7

84.9

81.9

90.8

WRS

86.1

88.3

82.8

79.4

90.0

HWH

95.7

92.3

100.0

70.0

81.3

LT-HWH

98.8

95.8

93.3

89.6

90.9

34

222

Completion rate is the ratio of inmates who have successfully completed the programme over the total number ofinmates emplaced on the same programme (less number of inmates who did not complete the programme due tofactor(s) outside their control (e.g. medical reasons, etc).
Caution needs to be exercised in the interpretation of such statistics. Similar to eﬀorts elsewhere which seek tocompare and evaluate the eﬀectiveness of prisons-based programmes, the above comparison suﬀers from a lackof control group and self-selection bias. Generally, inmates who are selected for such programmes are better
behaved in prison, display more positive attitude, and have fewer criminal antecedents. Hence, the observationshould not be interpreted as a scientiﬁc validation.

21.
SPS defines recidivism rate as the percentage of local offenders detained, convicted andimprisoned again for a new oﬀence within two years from their release. Oﬀenders who were emplacedon CBP had consistently performed better than oﬀenders who were not placed on CBP4. For the latest
year of comparison in 2006, recidivism rates for oﬀenders who had been emplaced on CBP was 12.9%.
The overall recidivism rate for the general population was 25.1%.

CONCLUSION
22.
SPS believes that for rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders into the community to beeﬀective, a coordinated systemic eﬀort is required. Hence, early release programmes do not function
independently, but are set within the overall Rehabilitation Framework. Within the prison system,
inmates go though various rehabilitation programmes at each incarceration stage. In the community,
SPS works with community partners and harnesses community resources to facilitate the ex-oﬀendersʼreintegration. At the national level, SPS endeavours to change societyʼs mindset towards giving
ex-offenders a second chance though the Yellow Ribbon Project. Through these efforts, SPS hasembarked on an on-going journey with a rehabilitation focus, constantly seeking to be more eﬀective inrehabilitating oﬀenders and steering them towards becoming responsible citizens.

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