CRIMINAL PROCEDURE CODE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

10.22 a.m.

The Attorney-General (Mr E. P. Shanks): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time." The second clause of this Bill is designed to ensure that the power to pass a sentence of preventive detention, which must by law be for a period of at least five years, shall be exercised only by the High Court. As the Criminal Procedure Code stands at present, it is not clear that these sentences of preventive detention can only be imposed by the High Court, although it is clear that the somewhat lesser sentence of corrective training is one restricted to the High Court. Clause 2 will make the position quite clear.

Clause 3 of this Bill is designed to avoid any doubt as to the powers of courts to remand accused persons in such custody as the courts think fit. It is necessary sometimes for accused persons to be given the opportunity, in their own interests, of pointing out individuals or places which have a bearing on cases under investigation. This cannot be done if the person is remanded in prison, and it is often undesirable, particularly in the initial stages of investigation, that a person should be granted bail merely for the purpose of enabling him to point out witnesses or places that are relevant to the case. This clause will bring the Criminal Procedure Code of the colony into line with the provisions which have been in existence in the Federation for some years and have worked well there, but with the difference that whereas in the Federation there is a period of 15 days during which this custody other than prison can subsist, it is thought that in Singapore the ordinary period of eight days should suffice.

Clause 4 of the Bill is in two parts. The first part is designed to make the offences of unlawful assembly and rioting not bailable as of right. It is considered that in cases of this nature, the courts should have a discretion to refuse bail if the circumstances so require, and in order that they should be able to do that, it is thought right to make the alterations referred to in paragraph (a) of clause 4.

The second part of this clause is designed to remove any doubt that might exist regarding a police officer's power to arrest without warrant a person who obstructs him in the discharge of his duties. Whereas section 31 of the Code quite clearly gives police officers that power, Schedule A to the Code - in referring to section 186 of the Penal Code - at present says that ordinarily a warrant should be obtained before arrest. Quite clearly with offences of this nature, immediate arrest is necessary. This amendment will remove the doubts that have existed in the past.

The fifth clause deals with the provisions of what is elsewhere known as the Borstal system. At present Schedule D to the Criminal Procedure Code which lays down the detailed provisions regarding reformative training, as we call it in Singapore, allow of a person being kept in a reformative training centre for a period of more than four years, whereas the normal practice is that a person should be so kept for only three years as a maximum and for the remainder of the four years from the date of the imposition of the sentence be under supervision. That period of release under supervision is regarded as one of the very important parts of reformative training and it is thought that the system would suffer if we allowed to remain in the law this power to keep a person in detention beyond the ordinary period of three years.

It might be thought that an anomaly had crept in when the Schedule was originally drafted and this clause is designed to put the matter right and to ensure that every person who is sentenced to reformative training shall have the opportunity of a period of freedom under supervision after he has undergone the training in the reformative training centre itself.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

Assembly immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. [Mr Shanks].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read the Third time and passed.