May 31, 2023

The Community Courts are part of the State Courts of Singapore and were established on 1 June 2006 as problem-solving courts which hear special cases that require community resources to establish the root causes of offending behaviours and facilitate the successful reintegration of individuals into community settings.

In ‘A Profile Study of Elderly Offenders in the Community Criminal Courts of Singapore: Theorizing Geriatric Criminality’ (International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 2021), Associate Professor Narayanan Ganapathy (NUS Sociology and Anthropology), Ms Samantha Sim, Ms Valerie Chua, and Ms Vanita Kaneson (State Courts Centre for Specialist Services) investigate the socio-economic profile of elderly offenders and the factors influencing their criminal motivation in Singapore by interviewing 51 offenders, with the majority being males in their late 60s.

Historically and globally, crime rates are known to peak at adolescence and decrease with age. However, due to improved health care and a higher quality of living, the number of elderly individuals globally is increasing. In ageing societies like Singapore, there has been a phenomenon of increasing elderly arrest and conviction rates.

Social connections function as a control on an individual. The loss of significant relationships weakens an individual’s bond to society, freeing a person to engage in delinquency.

Of the 51 elderly offenders, 64.7% were living with their family, 9.8% with non-family such as flatmates or friends, 11.8% were living alone, and 9.8% were homeless at the time of their appearance at the Community Courts. However, while the majority of the elderly offenders were living with their families, more than 80% of them indicated that they had “uncaring” and “unsupportive” relationships with their families and reported signs of hostility, violence, or being estranged. Of those who were married and divorced, only 11.8% indicated a positive marital relationship. Conversely, 50.9% indicated that they were in an “uncaring” and “unsupportive” marriage. Weak ties with family not only compromise social norms, attitudes, and feelings of social solidarity but also vastly reduce the effectiveness of informal social control in governing social conduct and curbing deviant motivation and behaviour.

Mental health issues were also noted to affect criminal motivation among elderly individuals. Almost 70% of sampled offenders experienced some form of mental health issues ranging from age-related impairment to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

Economic needs may also contribute to crime by elderly individuals given their structural inability to access institutionalized means to achieve the cultural goal of material success. More than half of the offenders were not engaged in full-time employment and almost half reported experiencing financial difficulties and were reliant on formal assistance for their daily subsistence.

Many elderly offenders predominantly came from and returned to deprived and disadvantaged communities where the prospect of achieving positive reintegration remained bleak. Their difficulties in reintegrating into conventional society were compounded by their physiological and cognitive deterioration, and for many, their underlying psychiatric condition had been undiagnosed at least until their appearance at the Community Courts.

Existing initiatives should be re-examined and enhanced to meet the unaddressed needs of elderly offenders to facilitate their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community.

Read the article here.