Academic excellence or privileged position should be irrelevant in sentencing young offenders: Chief Justice

SINGAPORE — In assessing if a young offender has demonstrated an “extremely strong propensity” for reform, any reference to their academic excellence or privileged position in life should be irrelevant, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said on Monday (April 27).

This is unless a link can be made between the offender’s academic excellence and their rehabilitative capacity, he added.

The Chief Justice made this point as he laid out a three-step framework he had developed to guide the courts, which he used in hearing an appeal concerning convicted molester Terence Siow Kai Yuan.

Siow, a 24-year-old undergraduate from the National University of Singapore, was sentenced to probation and community service in a district court last year for molesting a woman on an MRT train in 2018.

Following an appeal by the prosecution, the Chief Justice overturned the sentence on Monday and put him in jail for two weeks instead.

He did so because he found that Siow had not shown an “extremely strong propensity” for reform, which is required for offenders aged above 21 to get a rehabilitative sentence — such as probation — rather than a deterrent one.

He further highlighted that some had wrongly interpreted District Judge Jasvender Kaur’s sentencing decision as suggestive that “undergraduates were a privileged class immune from the usual consequences visited upon those who break the law”.

The case made headlines when she described Siow’s offences as “minor intrusions”, while a probation report stated that his academic results showed that he had the “potential to excel in life” and an “extremely strong propensity” to reform.

Chief Justice Menon stressed that he had come to a different sentence than the district judge’s partly because he heard more evidence that was not presented to her, and because of the analytical process he applied.

THE FRAMEWORK

In his 47-page written judgement, the Chief Justice said that in determining how capable a young offender is of reform, two considerations should be weighed against the presence of risk factors.

The first consideration in the framework he developed is whether the offender has shown a “positive desire to change” since breaking the law.

Some non-exhaustive factors that can indicate this are:

• Evidence of genuine remorse, such as a plea of guilt or “full and frank disclosure” of criminal activities beyond what the offender is charged with

• Taking active steps after committing their offences to leave their errant ways behind

• Complying with and being amenable to rehabilitative measures

• Not committing more offences

• The offences in question being “out of character”

The second consideration is whether there are conditions in the offender’s life that are conducive to helping him turn over a new leaf. These conditions include:

• Strong familial support

• Availability of a positive external support system, such as a romantic partner or religious community

• External sources of motivation for reform

• Availability of positive avenues to channel energy

After taking these into account, should the court come to a provisional view that an offender has demonstrated a sufficiently strong propensity for reform, the risk factors would then need to be examined, the Chief Justice said.

These include associating with negative peers or habitually using or depending on drugs.

In his oral grounds of decision, delivered through the video-conferencing platform Zoom on Monday, Chief Justice Menon added: “What follows from this is that any reference to an offender's scholastic excellence or privileged position in life would, in and of itself, be irrelevant.

“And so far as his educational record is concerned, a link would typically have to be drawn between such a factor and the offender's rehabilitative capacity.”

Even if the court finds an extremely strong propensity for reform, it can consider deterrence to be the main sentencing principle after regarding the nature and gravity of the offence, he said.