GANG-RELATED CRIMES AND TEEN GANGSTERISM

GANG-RELATED CRIMES AND TEEN GANGSTERISM: 1.

Mr Alvin Yeo asked the Minister for Home Affairs how prevalent is the problem of gangs in Singapore today and what are the measures being taken to bring them under control.

2.

Mdm Halimah Yacob asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) how serious is the problem of teen gangsterism in Singapore; (b) whether there are any studies done on what causes teens to turn to gangsterism; and (c) what measures are being taken to curb teen gangsterism.

3.

Ms Sylvia Lim asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) how many violent crimes

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recorded by the police in 2009 to 2010 were gang-related; and (b) whether there are any perceptible trends of concern relating to gang activity in the last five years.

The Minister for Home Affairs (Mr K Shanmugam): Mr Speaker, with your leave, I would take Question Nos. 1 to 3 together.

Mr Speaker: Yes, please.

Mr Shanmugam: Mr Speaker, Sir, the Members of Parliament asked about the gang situation, whether there are trends of concern and the measures taken to curb gang violence.

The rioting situation can, broadly, be used as a proxy indicator of gang violence. Between 2005 and 2009, rioting cases fell from 489 cases to 283 cases. Between January and September 2010, there were 214 rioting cases. Cases with secret society connotations have also generally decreased. These figures are in the handouts* given, so that Members themselves can look at them. The trends therefore are downward as a result of effective Police action over the years.

There has been understandable public concern over recent reported gang violence. And as I have previously stated, the Police take a serious view of such violence. At the same time, we must be careful not to draw erroneous conclusions based on recent reports of gang violence. Conclusions should be based on facts. Overall crime rates have fallen in the last five years. The rates for crimes against persons and violent property crimes in particular have also remained low and stable over the past five years. And as the handout shows, the trend of gang violence is downwards.

So when we assess the current situation, we need to assess with the

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right perspective and on the basis of all the facts. These two recent cases do not suggest that our crime situation is worsening or that our policing efforts are not adequate. We continue to be one of the cities with the lowest crime rates in the world. But low crime does not mean no crime.

What are the trends of concern? Traditional secret societies have been effectively suppressed by Police’s tough enforcement. What you now get are primarily street gangs with the following characteristics:

(a) they are loosely-organised street-corner gangs with fluid memberships;

(b) they have no links with the traditional gangs but adopt their names for recognition and credibility;

(c) they operate without any specific aim; and

(d) they fight over trivial matters such as staring incidents, passing of remarks and accidental contact.

Youths who join street-corner gangs are usually:

(a) school drop-outs, unskilled youths and students who are not academically inclined; and

(b) they turn to gangs to fulfil emotional and psychological needs not met in their families and schools. They seek a sense of belonging, security and power.

Forty-five percent of rioting cases this year involved youths. Thirty-two percent of rioting cases had secret society connotations.

Sir, I will now deal with how we have approached the issue. In terms of enforcement, we will charge the law

*Cols. 1803-1804.

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breakers where we can. Eight youths have been charged with murder in the Downtown East case. For the cases of armed rioting in Bukit Panjang, six are being processed for detention under the CL(TP)A.

We have a "zero-tolerance" policy towards gang activities and we will continue with that. Other than those persons arrested in relation to the Downtown East and Bukit Panjang incidents, Police have rounded up 93 suspected gang members since end October 2010. Police will continue their island-wide sweep.

The Ministry of Home Affairs will also study whether Police require additional powers to intervene upstream. The intent is to disrupt early the formation of loose gang associations. Examples of such powers could include:

(a) issuing directives to at-risk youths to abide by curfew hours; and

(b) issuing directives to attend intervention programmes.

Sir, enforcement measures alone will not be sufficient. Investing in preventive and rehabilitative efforts for at-risk youths and youth offenders is also needed.

The National Youth Guidance and Rehabilitation Committee (NYGR) coordinates preventive and rehabilitative programmes to tackle youth delinquency. These include:

(a) school talks and visits to Prisons for at-risk students;

(b) training of school operations managers as Honorary Voluntary Special Constabulary Officers;

(c) alerting parents of at-risk behaviour under Police’s "Youth Hanging Out Late" initiative; and

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(d) the Streetwise Programme to help youths disassociate from gangs.

The rehabilitative efforts have seen encouraging results. For example, of the 229 youths who completed the Streetwise Programme from 2005 to 2008, less than 10% of them have re-offended within one year of completing the programme.

We will do more. A new Central Youth Guidance Office (CYGO) under MCYS has been set up in July 2010. It coordinates inter-agency efforts to tackle youth delinquency. Minister of State Masagos leads this effort. The CYGO is studying solutions to:

(a) enhance outreach to at-risk youths; and

(b) coordinate intervention services at the local level.

They will be piloting some of these ideas soon.

Sir, the community also has a crucial role to play:

(a) families are our first line of defence. Parents need to pay more attention to their children’s activities;

(b) they need to identify tell-tale signs of delinquency; and

(c) seek help early if necessary.

This issue of youths and gangs requires a multi-pronged, multi-party approach. We will work with the community and do what is necessary to continue to keep this in check.

Let me conclude by emphasising the following:

(a) the crime rates are not going up – the rates have, in fact, been coming down steadily;

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(b) rioting cases are not going up – they have, in fact, been coming down steadily;

(c) the two recent cases of gang clashes do not mean that there has been an increase in gang activity;

(d) we remain a low crime city;

(e) the steps we have taken over the years have worked very well. But we will continue to try and take further steps.

Mdm Halimah Yacob (Jurong): Sir, I would like to ask the Minister two supplementary questions. First, the Minister used rioting as proxy to determine whether there is an increase in gang-related activities. Could the Minister please give figures as to the kind of arrests and the number of people arrested for the gang-related activities that the Minister has cited? The second part of this question is: could the Minister share with this House the breakdown in the figures, for instance, by gender and more specifically whether there is an increase in the number of girls involved in the gang-related activities and whether there is an increase in the number of Malay youths involved in gang-related activities?

My second question: One of the questions among people is that they feel there is less visibility on the ground of the Police compared to the past with the Neighbourhood Police Posts when the Police would ride their bicycles and go round the neighbourhood. Now, even the Neighbourhood Police Posts operate much shorter hours. Would the Ministry consider increasing the presence of the Police on the ground or increase the operating hours of the Neighbourhood Police Posts or resurrect the Police-on-wheels scheme? That would help to restore confidence in the people.

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Mr Shanmugam: Thank you. The Member has asked for fairly detailed statistics. As I understand it, the Member would like to know the number of youths picked up for gang-related activities and then, specifically, whether we could give the gender and, third, whether we could be more specific on Malay youths.

For some of these statistics, I think it would be best if the Member wrote in and then, I can give it to her because I do not have the details right now. Let me try and do the best that I can. Total rioting cases: I have given the handout. Rioting with youth involvement has come down from 205 in 2005 to 112 last year. So far, up to September this year, 96. If Members would like to look at the proportion of total rioting cases which involve youths, it has stayed steady at about 40%. If Members look at actual numbers: because the total number of rioting cases has come down, the number of cases of youth involvement in rioting has also come down. I do not have the precise gender breakdown here but I can tell the Member that in that regard it is primarily boys and not so many women. We had a programme specifically targeted at at-risk Malay youths, the Giant Trampoline Project. It was a successful programme but after review we decided that it was best done combined with the national StreetWise Programme. So it has been folded into the national StreetWise Programme. For the detailed statistics, perhaps if the Member wrote in, we can give them to her.

The second point that the Member made is a larger policy point, about the perception that there is reduced Police presence and whether we can increase Police presence. We have to go back to the underlying point: the thrust or the assumption behind the question is that crime is increasing and that can be solved by having more Police patrolling either by bicycles or by having men-in-blue patrolling. But that assumption is wrong.

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Crime is not increasing. Crime is actually decreasing. We seek to continuously reduce crime.

Any case of rioting is taken seriously. That is the meaning of the "zero-tolerance" policy. We, however, have to be realistic that in a city of five million people, there will be some crime. We will have to deal with it. What is the best and most optimal use of our resources? If we believed that that is going to be done by having men patrol on bicycles, then that would be done. But over many years, we have done various studies on what is the most optimal use of our people: how do we leverage and synergise with the community, is it better to put our men in fast patrol cars and having an overall view of the entire area, having better intelligence, knowing what the hot spots are and being able to react very quickly? Bear in mind that each cohort in the entire population is shrinking and the Police force, like everybody else, has a challenge in getting our share of talent in. And only certain types of officers can make it to the Police force. Taking all that into account, we have to be realistic of what are the resources available and make the best use of those resources. The fact that the best use has been made of those resources, as the Member can see, has been borne out through the crime statistics. And that is the ultimate answer.

Ms Sylvia Lim (Non-Constituency Member): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Some supplementary questions for the Minister. First, coming back to the statistics that were shown to us: does the Minister agree that apart from the rioting cases that have been reported: (i) there are probably unreported cases, and (ii) even if there are cases reported, some of these so called gang-related activities could be categorised under other crime types? For example, even a simple crime like voluntarily causing hurt could have had

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some gang connotation even though it was not classified as rioting. It depends on how the Police classified it. The rioting figure itself does not give us the full picture.

Second question: Sir, I understand that as far as the Police's response to secret societies is concerned, it has always been specifically under the CID. About two years back, the Secrets Societies Branch (SSB) was merged into a more generic unit which had to deal also with anti-vice, gambling suppression and so on. It was only some time this year that it was reconstituted into a dedicated Secret Societies Branch. I would like the Minister to comment on whether he thinks it is possible that during this two-year period when the SSB was merged into this generic entity, there might have possibly been some loss of focus on this crime problem and perhaps even some loss in intelligence because the officers were involved in responding to other crimes as well. The fact that it has been reconstituted shows that the Police find that the gang issue is still quite alive in Singapore.

Third question is about schools as a possible breeding ground for gang activity. Earlier, the Minister mentioned that the Ministry will work closely with the operations managers of the schools but I wonder whether it is time for MHA to put in more resources to work with the schools to combat this problem at the inception.

Last question: It was reported that some of the suspects had attended some programmes conducted by MHA earlier. Could Minister tell us which are the programmes that they attended?

Mr Shanmugam: I count that as five questions. I will try and remember them. I think the first point was whether apart from the reported rioting cases there

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would be unreported cases. I think the thrust of the suggestion behind that question is maybe these statistics cannot be taken at face value. If that is what Ms Lim is suggesting, I would disagree because the point is the reported cases themselves tell a story. The fact that cases go unreported must mean that they are not serious or, for some reason, there were obviously no victims and it was not serious enough for it to be brought up to the Police's attention. As a trend, the Member can look at the number of different proxy indicators: the number of rioting cases, the number of youths picked up, the reports made. And we can draw conclusions from that. And, certainly, I do not think we can draw the opposite conclusion that for some reason, maybe during certain years, there were so many unreported cases that the trends are the reverse. I do not think we can draw that conclusion. I think the conclusion I have drawn is a fair one.

Ms Lim also asked, could there be other types of cases and whether could there be classification issues such that maybe the trends are different and which are not captured by the statistics I have given. And for that, I can tell her that we have looked at the different statistics which I have referred to, but I will give her another statistic. Let us look at rioting cases involving the use of dangerous weapons. That would tell us if there is an increasing trend of violence in rioting cases. The total rioting cases – Members have got the statistics. Rioting with dangerous weapons, charged under section 148, has remained relatively stable between 70 and 60-odd between 2005 and 2009. This year so far, 38 cases. They formed roughly somewhere between 14% and 20% of the total number of rioting cases. So whichever way we look at it, I think the conclusion is the situation has remained stable and, on the whole, has been coming down.

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The third question that Ms Lim had was the reconstitution of the Secret Societies Branch. Again, the answer that I would give is the Member can be reassured that there is no loss of focus on this issue. There is complete focus on the issue of crime as a whole as well as how to deal with youth gangs and gangsters who may not necessarily be youths which is why we have our legal framework in place. The number of people with secret society connotations who have been picked up and currently under detention number just under 200. There has been a very careful assessment of every situation and where it is necessary to use CL, we have not hesitated to do so. Where it is possible to charge them for serious offences in Court, we have done so. And, again, I will return to the answer: Members should look at the results. The results are clear, of this approach. The Police have to constantly look, together with changing population demographics, geographical changes, how best to optimise their resources and whether there can be synergies. They are always looking to find these synergies. So we try out different strategies in different departments. That does not mean that a particular one loses focus. And, in fact, the Police have been actively working, not just on the crime prevention and control, but also to try and spread the message down to the schools and the youths.

Ms Lim has also asked: can we do more with the schools? I think we are doing a fair bit. What we do, for example – I do not intend for this to be an exhaustive list – youth at risk are identified. Officers talk to them and explain to them the risks of getting into crime. They are brought down to the Prisons to see for themselves what it would be like if they get on to the wrong side. They are given some taste of what it would be like to be a prisoner in that the Prison Officers treat them like quasi prisoners just to show them what it would

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be like. We get mentors to talk to them, to try and get them to make sure that they do not get into these problems. And, we have the National Committee on Youth Guidance and Rehabilitation (NYGR), for example; we have the StreetWise Programme and the Trampoline Project. But there is only so much society or organisations like the Police can do. And in all of these questions I would also like the MPs to focus another part of it – fundamentally, parental responsibility and individual responsibility. Let us not start taking the approach that every problem can be solved by the State or by the Police Force. The Police Force is there to protect society and to deal with the problems but because we are left with the situation where sometimes the parental responsibility is not there, we have to deal with the issue.

We have been looking further. I agree with Ms Lim that we must continue to look at this and see what else we can do. There are two things that we have talked about in the last two weeks. One is: whether the Police can intervene even earlier on the crime control model to pick up youths who have not committed any crime yet but where violence is just possibly around the corner. Can we find the model to make sure that they do not get into those groups? We are studying it. I am not sure that there is a clear solution but we will study it and if there is a legislative solution, we will come up with it.

Secondly, we all recognise that the moment a kid gets out of school or drops out of school and he falls into bad company, there is a very high risk that that kid will end up as a prisoner or commit a crime. We have to look at the point where the kid is at risk of dropping out of school or actually drops out school and see what more can be done. Members have heard me talk about the new Central Youth Office headed by Minister of State Masagos. He will do a

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study to see how best we can do more. It is not something that is piloted by the Ministry of Home Affairs alone, nor can it be. It requires inter-agency effort. So he will lead an inter-agency effort along those lines. I think I have answered the Member's questions. Is there anything that I have left out?

Ms Sylvia Lim: The question on the programmes attended by the suspects who were charged or rounded up.

Mr Shanmugam: Right. Can I ask that the Member sends in a written question on that and we will give her greater detail. So far, I have identified the StreetWise Programme. I talked about where our Prison Officers take the youths to the Prisons to give them a taste of what it would be like. There are a number of programmes like these. But if the Member wants more details, she can write in.

Mr Speaker: Last question, Mr Christopher de Souza.

Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah): Thank you, Minister, for your replies. The statistics showed that the rioting may be going down but I think anyone would agree that it is very rare for eight people to be charged for a murder against one person. So I think that signifies a great deal of violence in that case. Coming out of the recent cases, my questions are: (i) would the Minister reconsider the manner in which operations against secret society units or gangs are levelled, (ii) whether we need a dedicated anti-gang related unit and a centralised one, and (iii) would the Minister consider keeping the Neighbourhood Police Posts open 24 hours?

Mr Shanmugam: Again, I think my answer is going to be very similar to the one given to Mdm Halimah. The assumption behind Mr Christopher de Souza's question is this: eight people have been charged – that signifies seriousness, that

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signifies that the crime situation is worsening and, perhaps, the way to deal with it is to have a dedicated anti-secret society unit and to have Neighbourhood Police Posts. That is the sequence of thinking. First and foremost, as I pointed out, first assumption on the trend of cases is not correct. The trend is downward. The overall crime rate is coming down. Likewise, the rioting cases. We have to start with facts because when we talk about deploying Police resources, it must be based on careful analysis of the facts and not knee-jerk reactions.

Would having Neighbourhood Police Posts in a greater number of areas and having them operate for longer hours help in the precise situations we are talking about? Could it have prevented these two rioting cases? That is how one must approach it. The studies and internal assessments we have done is that the resources we have and the optimal use of them is the way we are doing it now. Neighbourhood Police Centres with fast patrol cars, fast responders and more emphasis on intelligence on the ground and picking people up early if we identify them as gangsters. There is a new problem that is turning up when they are not members of the traditional gangs or not quite the type of gangsters who can be picked up under CL. But, nevertheless, they can quickly commit violence. How do we deal with it? That is the issue and I have talked about how we think we will deal with that issue. The Member can be rest assured the CID is very focused on this particular issue of reducing violence as well as reducing gang violence and a broad array of measures would have to be looked at and I have talked about them.