SINGAPORE — Offenders convicted of serious violent or sexual offences may continue to be detained after serving their sentences and only released when they are no longer deemed to be a public risk. This is if a new sentencing regime proposed by the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is passed in Parliament.  

It would differ from the existing imprisonment approach where the courts sentence a criminal to jail for a specified term and the prisoner must be released when the term has been served.

The proposed sentencing regime, called the Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection, was among a number of proposals under the Criminal Procedure (Miscellaneous Amendment) Bill tabled in Parliament on Wednesday (Jan 10) by MinLaw and MHA.

In a joint statement, the ministries said that there have been “egregious cases involving dangerous offenders”, including serial sex offenders who preyed on children and recalcitrant offenders who commit serious sexual or violent offences after being released from prison.

“We want to ensure that such dangerous and high-risk offenders are not released back into the community until they no longer pose a threat to public safety,” the ministries said, adding that sentencing options now are inadequate to deal with such offenders.

“For offences that do not attract life imprisonment, the available sentencing options all presently require an offender to be released automatically after a certain point, regardless of the threat they pose to others.”

The ministries explained that corrective training and preventive detention can be used to deal with repeat offenders who commit serious crimes, but these are for a set duration and for offenders whose offences did not justify life imprisonment at the outset.

"However, they may still pose a threat to the public and would still have to be released at the end of those sentences.” 

A public consultation exercise was done in 2021 on the introduction of sentences for public protection and the overall feedback was that the proposed changes were "beneficial to our criminal justice system”.

The Government first announced in April 2022 that it was considering such a proposal.

Legal experts who spoke to TODAY then had called for safeguards against excessive detention and cautioned Parliament to “be scrupulous and exercise utmost caution” in passing such a proposed law.

Other proposed changes under Wednesday's tabled amendment Bill include empowering the police to search a suspect without warrant in some cases and compelling an accused person — with “reasonably necessary force” for specific circumstances — to undergo a forensic medical examination, as well as other changes to enhance transparency in the criminal court process.

HANDLING REPEAT OFFENDERS 

There are now two primary sentencing options to address repeat offenders who commit serious offences: The corrective training and preventive detention regimes.

Under the Bill, a separate Sentence for Public Protection regime is being proposed to replace the two existing options. 

MHA said that there were 141 people sentenced to corrective training and 127 to preventive detention from 2015 until the third quarter of 2023. This comes up to an average of 30 such sentences a year.

The Sentence for Public Protection will apply to recalcitrant offenders considered dangerous, who are aged at least 21 years at the time of the offence and will entail a fixed jail sentence of five to 20 years, which will be determined by the court.

It does not offer an automatic remission, but such convicts may be released on licence by the Minister for Home Affairs after serving two-thirds of the sentence. 

As for the proposed Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection, it is aimed at dangerous offenders who have committed serious sexual or violent offences, such as culpable homicide, rape and sexual penetration of a minor, and pose a substantial risk of causing serious physical or sexual harm to others.

They will not be automatically released after serving a minimum term of between five and 20 years determined by the court, and may be detained until assessed by the Minister of Home Affairs to be suitable for release.

As part of the safeguards to ensure the sentence meted out is fair, the court will decide on the appropriateness of the Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection after considering risk assessment reports by the Institute of Mental Health and defence counsel.

Speaking to the media on the proposed changes, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said that cases of a person reoffending after serving sentence for a sexual offence happens “quite often elsewhere”, though “lesser in Singapore”.

In response to TODAY's queries on the number of such serious cases, MinLaw and MHA said that the number of such cases "is not large".

"However, our view is that even one such case is one too many. We are therefore introducing the Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection to better protect the public from such dangerous offenders and to provide the courts with an additional sentencing option to deal with such cases."

In a press release from both ministries, the following cases were given as examples of serious offences, which may be dealt with by the proposed sentencing regime in the future:

• In 2022, a man was sentenced to 45 years' imprisonment for sexually abusing eight children over a period of 16 years. The judge described the case as an “exceptionally sickening sexual abuse”, with the prosecution branding it “one of the worst cases of paedophilic sexual abuse that has come before the courts”
   
• In June 2020, a man was sentenced to the maximum 20 years' preventive detention after sexually assaulting his 12-year-old stepdaughter. He committed this offence within two years of his release from a previous conviction of raping his 11-year-old niece

On the process of releasing convicts under the Sentence for Enhanced Public Protection, Mr Shanmugam said: “There will be a proper assessment (such as at the end of the fifth year, 10th year) — is he mentally and psychologically fit to be released, or is he going to continue to be a menace to society?

“If he continues to be a menace to society, he can be kept in.”

MinLaw and MHA said that if an offender is not released after the minimum period of custody, his or her case must be reviewed within 12 months of that decision.

"This will continue for as long as the offender remains detained," they added.

If an offender is released on licence, the case will be reviewed every two years to assess if the offender should be released unconditionally and if the sentence should be brought to an end.

A review board advising the Minister for Home Affairs in relation to prisoners under the enhanced regime will be composed of persons with "high public standing" with experience in forensic psychiatry, psychology or the criminal justice system. 

NO BAILOR REQUIRED FOR MINOR CHARGES 

The bill on Wednesday also contained other changes aimed at promoting greater efficiency and fairness in criminal proceedings.

For example, the courts will be empowered to allow accused persons facing “relatively minor charges” to be released on personal bond instead of bail.

These charges refer to non-bailable offences that carry a punishment of not more than seven years, MinLaw said. 

To be temporarily released on bail, one or more persons known as surety or bailor must execute a bond for a sum of money to ensure the accused’s attendance in court.

A personal bond, however, is a sum of money posted by the accused personally, without a third-party acting as a surety.

“This (amendment) will enable more accused persons to be released before trial — currently, such persons will be remanded if they are offered bail but cannot find a bailor,” MHA and MinLaw said.

MinLaw said in response to TODAY's queries that it does not have information on the number of accused persons who have been offered bail by the court but were not released when they failed to procure a bailor or the requisite bail amount.