November 23, 2020

The International Day for Tolerance is observed every 16^th of November to celebrate diversity and reject prejudice against other cultures. In Singapore, the recidivism rate of Malays and Indians is disproportionately high compared to the Chinese majority. In ‘Race, reintegration, and social capital in Singapore’ (International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 2016), Associate Professor Narayanan Ganapathy (NUS Department of Sociology) and Professor Lian Kwen Fee (Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam) investigated institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of discrimination and racial hierarchies that negatively affect the reintegration prospects of criminals from ethnic minorities in Singapore.

While there is no explicit discrimination based on race, A/P Ganapathy finds that prison authorities perceive ethnic minorities as recalcitrant offenders, and thus deny them entry to rehabilitative opportunities that have limited vacancies. A Malay inmate who was interviewed by A/P Ganapathy even held the view that the Yellow Ribbon Project is for ‘Yellow’ people only – meaning the Chinese.

Furthermore, A/P Ganapathy argues that Singapore’s racialized system of welfare delivery – evident in the establishment of ethnic self-help groups – has entrenched an unequal possession of resources across races. In Singapore, the Chinese dominate the middle and upper classes and thus command better economic resources – which ethnic and faith-based rehabilitation agencies are able to access to fund their programmes. Chinese ex-offenders also have access to interpersonal networks that provide better economic opportunities for them to reintegrate into the workforce.

However, A/P Ganapathy also suggests that these unequal outcomes are partly a result of ethnic minorities’ tendencies to foster social ties with co-ethnics rather than the Chinese. This isolates them and limits their access to the resources held by the Chinese majority. An Indian ex-inmate recounted pressures to “take the side” of his Indian cellmates, leading him to reject offers to participate in rehabilitative programmes in prison.

A/P Ganapathy concludes that the Singapore government’s policy of “racialized rehabilitation” is likely to benefit majority clients but disadvantage minority members, and that reintegration needs to be seen as a structural issue that intersects race and social class.

Read the article here.