It was estimated that there were then 10,000 gangsters in Singapore belonging to 120 gangs. Close to 1,000 suspects were in jail. Altogether, 816 gangsters took advantage of the amnesty. As soon as the amnesty ended, the police began rounding up suspects. Among them were the all-girl Ang Hor Tiap (or Red Butterfly Gang). Formed by prostitutes and bargirls, they offered their services for the protection of those in the crime trade, as well as to housewives suffering from unfaithful husbands. For a small fee they would beat up any woman who had enticed away the husband of a client. The gang-girls were identified by a tattooed red butterfly on the upper part of a thigh. Most of the gang were soon arrested. The remnants of the gang surfaced again in 1967, but they were finally smashed with 17 arrests in 1968.
By then, not every secret society had an initiation ceremony. Singapore’s industrialisation and the building of new towns with high-rise flats meant that lonely woods, temples and old houses in which these illegal ceremonies could be organised had become scarce. When the ceremonies were held they followed the usual pattern: terrible oaths were sworn, a finger pricked, blood was mixed with rice wine and drunk from a bowl. Gang clashes continued and traitors were executed.
In 1960, gang fights dropped to 241 and only 11 gangsters were killed. The following year there were fewer collisions, but 18 murders. In 1971, from 700 gang fights in 1959 the number had fallen to less than 70. But the killings were even higher in 1971 than they were when the PAP came to power 12 years before. From these figures, it was fair to conclude that the gangs had become wiser, knowing that the police would actively intervene in gang fights. So they avoided open clashes, but continued to kill one another, a happening that did not cause the police much unhappiness.
In 1972, more than 800 secret society gangsters were under detention. They belonged to gangs such as the Sio Koon Tong, the 08, 24, 36, the Sio Gi Ho, Sio Loh Kuan, or the triads (the societies with initiation ceremonies) such as the Tiong Neng Tok. There were five or six main groups to which lesser gangs were associated. The average age of a gangster was between 15–21 years old; they were mostly school drop-outs. Why did they join gangs? The police did a survey and found that of 87 picked up, one said he joined for excitement, 48 joined through friends, and 23 were forced to join. In 1972, it was estimated that there were perhaps 20,000 gangsters in Singapore, about half of them active. Most of them were either Cantonese or Hokkien.
Two years later, the Home Minister told Parliament that the secret societies were under control, but he admitted that gangs still existed and the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, first introduced in 1955, was still needed. He told Parliament that in 10 years, 1,000 suspects had been arrested on an average every year. Five months later, the New Nation reported that secret society members were still responsible for more than half the daily crime in Singapore. The police reckoned that 10,000 gangsters belonged to 161 secret societies, both active and inactive. The most powerful group, the paper said, was the Sri Tong independent group which was ‘controlling all the major bars, brothels and gambling dens’. Next on the list were the Loh Kuan and Sio Loh Kuan groups. Of the 50 murders that year in Singapore, 20 were gangland reprisals.
After 20 years in office, the PAP government was forced to admit that gangsterism still existed, though on a much reduced scale. Gang suspects continued to be jailed without trial,
Probably one reason why gangsters can survive in Singapore is their pragmatic approach to the extortion racket. They seldom make ‘unreasonable’ demands. They are content to extort comparatively low dues for their protection. They work on a low-profit margin, and try to involve as many prostitutes, hawkers, bargirls, small traders, taxi-drivers, as possible. The gangsters’ reasoning is that victims prefer to pay a small fee rather than be bothered about reporting the matter to the police, thus risking either physical injury from the gang, or a day’s loss of earnings by going to the police station. The gangsters rely on victims believing that it is safer and cheaper, in the long run, to pay up.
The Experiment
Devan Nair, a founder-member of the People’s Action Party, was in jail in 1959 when the PAP were voted into office. One of the conditions Lee Kuan Yew laid down before accepting the invitation of the Head of State to form a government was that Devan Nair and other pro-communist elements must be released. Nair by then was prepared to renounce his communist sympathies and to accept Lee’s democratic socialism. Lee’s conditions were accepted. Nair and the others were set free. At once, Devan Nair persuaded the Prime Minister to set up a Prison Inquiry Commission, “for I had not liked what I had seen of many of the demeaning conditions of imprisonment imposed by the British authorities-not on political detainees (on the whole my fellow detainees and I were treated well), but on convicted prisoners. For example, on the approach of a British prison officer, every convict had to kneel on the floor, with his head down. That aroused my ire, and it still does when I think of it.”
The Commission was appointed in November 1959 and Devan Nair was named chairman. Two of the Commissioners were academicians from the University of Malaya in Singapore: Professor T.H. Elliott and Dr Jean Robertson. The others were Jek Yuen Thong, Osman bin Abdul Gani, Chean Kim Seang, Tay Kay Hai, Sandrasegaram Woodhall and Francis Thomas.
The Commission submitted their report on 1 December 1960. “In terms of the modest aims which are being translated into practice in the new Asian states, and other parts of the world, our prison system will have to be almost wholly re-oriented if it is to make an effective contribution to the solution of the problem of crime and criminals in Singapore.” The Commissioners recommended that the reorganisation of the State’s prison institutions should proceed on the basis of the general principles and considerations set out in their report. The most obvious and fundamental of these considerations ‘is that the true object of the prison system is to achieve the rehabilitation of offenders so that they can return to the community as law-abiding and socially useful persons’.
The Government accepted most of the recommendations. Some were modified and some were not accepted. Prisoners were in three classifications: unconvicted prisoners (remand and civil prisoners, Criminal Law detainees, political detainees); convicted prisoners, and special categories (prisoners with less than six months, persons sentenced to death, persons detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, vagrants, opium addicts).
Criminal Law detainees were gangsters: they were detained, without trial, under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance 1955. A Government White Paper referred to their ‘violent and unruly character’. Determined to wipe out the gangster problem, the government realised that this would mean placing a strain on the accommodation in the maximum-security prisons, ‘and, as a result, may necessitate continued overcrowding in the cells’. It was this overcrowding in the cells which the Commissioners had held was inhuman treatment on the part of the British. Faced with the problem themselves, the new anti-colonial government was forced to continue to overcrowd the cells. At the same time, the government agreed with the Commission that the prison system must evolve towards providing a comprehensive and effective rehabilitation service. As a positive gesture in this direction the Government accepted the Commission’s recommendation that an open prison be established on an island 15 miles south of the main Singapore island, an island called Pulau Senang. There, the idea was, gangsters could work their way back to society through toil and sweat.