Dateline’s rare access marks the first time Australian TV cameras have gone inside this notoriously harsh correctional facility where life is designed to meet the basics of existence and nothing more.
First-time offender Matthew was sentenced to eight years in Changi for selling meth. Source: SBS / Adam Liaw
Singapore-born Matthew, who agreed to speak to Dateline, was sentenced to eight years for trafficking drugs.
The former schoolteacher was arrested in possession of 93g of methamphetamine — people found in possession of 250g or more of meth face the death penalty in Singapore.
The country’s penal code is designed to benefit society rather than to reflect the severity of the crime committed.
Inmates are held in individual cells without furniture. Source: SBS / Adam Liaw
There are over 40 offences that attract a punishment of caning: from rape and robbery to overstaying a visa or even obstructing a train. Anyone caught with small amounts of drugs (2g of heroin, 3g of cocaine, 15 of cannabis, 25g of methamphetamine) is presumed to be trafficking and could face up to 20 years in prison. Possessing more than 500g of cannabis, 15g of heroin or 250g of methamphetamine can result in a death sentence.
Singapore’s recidivism rate (the rate of released prisoners reoffending and returning to jail) is just 22 per cent — half that of Australia’s — and consistently ranks low in global surveys.
Prisoner rehabilitation in Singapore
Reuben Leong oversees the maximum-security correctional unit in Wing B, which is reserved for those convicted of the most serious and violent crimes, including drug trafficking.
Ruben Leong and his fellow officers of the maximum-security unit at Changi refer to themselves as ‘Captains of Lives’ and say their role is not just as law enforcement officers but the rehabilitation of inmates. Source: SBS / Adam Liaw
Leong said a typical day at Changi begins with a muster check to count the inmates. For breakfast, they are served four slices of bread and a hot drink. The food is served through a hatch at the bottom of their cell door.
“We’re in the business of change,” he told Dateline. “You might not succeed on the first try, second try, but I think our hope is that they’ll be successfully rehabilitated, reintegrated into society.”
Immanuel, 41, has been in and out of prison since he was 16 and says he’s been punished by caning seven or eight times. Source: SBS / Adam Liaw
Most of the inmates’ days are taken up by activities that are designed to help them stay out of crime once they’re out of prison.
Like Matthew, he’s in Changi for the possession and trafficking of methamphetamine, as well as violent assault.
“I’ve wasted most of my life in prison from the age of 16 until now.”
Sisters Sangkari and Angel come to Changi from Kuala Lumpur every week to visit their brother Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, who’s been awaiting execution for nearly eight years. Source: SBS / Adam Liaw
‘I want a second chance’
Media are not allowed to speak with death row inmates, but Pranthaman passed on a message through his sisters:
Pannir Selvam Pranthaman was sentenced to death in 2017 for trafficking 51g of heroin across the border from Malaysia. Source: Supplied
“I want a second chance. I might have made a mistake, but still I want a second chance.”
On 20 February, just hours before Pranthaman was set to be hanged, a court ordered a delay in his execution. He would have become the third person put to death for drug-related crimes in Singapore this year.
But activists and international human rights organisations have long called for the abolition of the death penalty, arguing that death row sentences like Pranthaman’s are ‘cruel and senseless’ and only target the couriers of the drug trade.
Anti-death penalty activist Kirsten Han says there’s no evidence that capital punishment serves as a deterrence. Source: SBS / Adam Liaw
“The Singaporean government will just keep repeating that it is a deterrence, even though there’s never any conclusive evidence that it is. The death penalty is murder dressed as administration,” said Kirsten Han from the Transformative Justice Collective.
“If I focus on the fact that it’s a miserable living condition, then I will be very sad,” he said. “But at the onset of my incarceration, I told myself that I’m not going to think like that, I’m going to see the good in everything.”