Lessons from the East: Reentry as a Community Development Tool

Singapore is known for many things; the delicious, addictive “sling;” a compliant society; multiple uses of the “cane;” a vibrant economy; and perhaps the best-organized and largest reentry program in the world. The International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) chose Singapore as the site of the 13th annual conference this past September because of the reentry program, although some of the 500 delegates from 66 different countries may have also been enticed by the mystique of the Raffles Hotel, the home of the Singapore Sling.

When I landed at midnight on the 8th of September after more than 24 hours either on an airplane or in a terminal, the morning Strait Times was just landing on the immaculately clean curbs. Concern about a recent report on declining birth rates and the number of immigrants filled the entire front page.

Singapore became an independent (from the Federation of Malaysia) city-state in 1965. Since that time under the patriarchal-style leadership of Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Singapore has become an enviable financial rival of Hong Kong and Beijing. Arriving in the traffic-managed downtown zone along tree-lined boulevards, our taxi passed one development site with more building cranes than my entire state of South Carolina. Economic vitality is as prevalent in the social ethos as locally cultivated orchids are in the grand hotel lobbies.

Singapore believes in planning and the evidence of such was immediately apparent as the entire urban core was being transformed into a grand prix racecourse. Following three days of deafening engine roar and western music, the streets will be quickly returned to litter-free corridors of high-end retail, luxurious high-rise residential, and high-stakes gambling. Last year, the two new casinos extracted more money from offshore gamblers then all of the casinos in Australia.

With all of the planning and economic activity, and a will to succeed that is apparent on the multi-ethnic faces of the 4.5 million residents, the Strait Times article fired a warning shot across the bow of the Moshe Safdie-created aircraft carrier located 57 stories atop the Marina Sands Hotel. Singapore is running out of people to sustain their investment in a new financial world.

In the last decade, according to not only the Strait Times but an Economist article the same week, the number of children born per household declined from 1.85 to 1.15 while the number of immigrants awarded citizenship was halved in a single year. Demographers have told us for years that a nation, state, community, and family dynasty requires a birth rate of 2.1 per household to sustain the population. We are learning from the economic woes of places such as Italy, Russia, Greece, and Japan that a secure retirement depends less on the idealized cabin in the wilderness than a motivated and well-trained cadre of young workers.

While no speaker at the ICPA conference specifically addressed the relationship between a declining birthrate and programs to reduce re-offending, in effect the entire stimulating program had this emerging dilemma as a subsurface theme. Reentry is a coat of many colors, but the consistent thread is improved employability. The research concluding that reliable employment is the best hedge against re-offending is plentiful.

In past years, the media has not always reported on the Singapore criminal justice system with glowing accolades. Stories regarding frequent uses of the cane and rope frequently drew the attention of Western reporters. But beyond the eye, or grasp, of much of the self-congratulatory world, the prison system in Singapore was quietly addressing a structural problem: social, cultural, and economic survival of the State through the training of all available workers.

With the first two phases of the 23,000-bed Changi Prison Complex, the largest prison development program on a single site in the world was launched in the 1990s. Immediately following in the early 2000’s, the astute and politically neutral leadership of the Singapore Prison Service quietly developed a unique reentry program. Inspired by the Tony Orlando song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree” and a recognition that nearly all of the 13,000 prisoners would be going home to a 239-square-mile island state one day, a comprehensive plan to prepare for that eventuality was conceived.

Using the mantra — Captains of Lives — the entire agency began a change in aims, attitude, and aptitude that resulted in a comprehensive range of services and programs that focused on better preparing the released prisoner to be accepted as a rehabilitated person and remain as a contributing member of the community. The local commercial, social, and faith communities were engaged through various creative means to accept that rehabilitation is not simply the task of prison staff, but ultimately that of the community from which they came. Singapore aims to practice restorative justice, not just write about it.

Because the investment in the benefits of cooperation has been as equal in the local community as the prison community, most graduates of the Yellow Ribbon Project have a place to live and work upon release. A network of aftercare workers follows the prisoner’s pathway back into the community to increase the chances of success. The historical obstacle of obtaining productive employment has been diminished by focusing the needs of the inside and outside communities towards a similar survival goal.

During the early stages of developing the Yellow Ribbon Project, representatives of the Singapore justice community visited the United States to learn of this “new” approach to offender rehabilitation and preparation. While it would be very gratifying to think that they returned to Singapore with something they wanted to replicate, we would be wrong. The reentry program that continues to evolve in Singapore is unique to their prison culture and their nation’s needs.

And perhaps that is the lesson from the East. Reentry works best when there is an overarching community commitment to its success. In the case of Singapore, the ability to sustain the economic vitality of their community is intertwined with success of prisoner rehabilitation. A novel approach to an ancient truth.