Appointed by the Head of State, Sir William Goode, on 11 November 1959, the Commissioners were asked by the government for an urgent solution to the serious problems arising in the prisons from the presence of some 400 persons detained under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance, introduced by the British in 1955. They were violent, resentful, quarrelsome men: they lived 18 hours a day in their crowded cells in unhygienic conditions due to lack of adequate water supplies. The Commissioners discovered that ‘these men lived without hope or dignity’. They condemned in strongest possible terms the existing conditions. “No effort has been made to rehabilitate these men.” The Commissioners were determined that something should be done. To find an urgent solution, the Commissioners in January 1960, set up an Ad Hoc Committee consisting of Professor T.H. Elliott, Sandra Woodhull and Jek Yuen Thong. Within weeks they had produced the Pulau Senang Scheme.
The Commissioners commented briefly upon the scheme in their report because by then it had become an operative part of the prisons system. “We wish to indicate that, devised to deal with a special problem, it incorporates concepts different in some respects from those embodied in our Report, while observing those general principles that we consider fundamentally essential in any effective rehabilitative scheme.
The Pulau Senang Scheme assumes that most of the detainees are likely to be rationally responsive to a system of incentives and that with the increasing benefits they discover they enjoy through an increasing acceptance on their part of the normal values of society, they will also come to realise that there are other and more profitable ways of living in society than engaging in unacceptable anti-social activities of their former mode of living.”
The Commissioners continued: “In the prisons we have proposed a scheme which attaches great importance to the social acceptance of the individual and which recognises that there may be people who would be quite unresponsive to incentive inducements either because they are inadequate in a competitive world, or because of their resentment against society, or for other more complex reasons, and have consequently developed their own and personally satisfying scale of values. Clearly for such people a different approach is necessary. This we have attempted to provide by discounting incentives and competitive activities and by offering privileges which are not necessarily earned and which would not necessarily be taken away for misbehaviour. We would wish the difference between these two separate systems to be maintained in the hope that valid comparisons might be made at a later date when the results of the complementary approaches to the general problem of anti-social behaviour could be comprehensively assessed.
We would certainly regard the Pulau Senang Scheme as being in some degree experimental, but we do not consider that this is in any way to be criticised, when so little is known concerning the causes of anti-social behaviour and probably little more regarding their effective treatment.”
Making their investigations which eventually led to the establishment of the Pulau Senang Settlement, the Ad Hoc Committee found there were 426 police detainees held in Changi Prison, There were two groups: those who volunteered for work and those who did not. Only 57 volunteered. They constituted less of a problem than the others: they occupied separate cells and observed normal prison routine and followed normal working hours. The remainder, because of the high prison population, were accommodated three to a cell. They had two exercise yards. The men were classified according to their secret society affiliations. All the members of the 24 gang occupied one yard and members of the 08 gang the other.
For security reasons it was not possible to let all the detainees out at the same time during the day. Half were let out into the exercise yard in the morning and half in the afternoon. Consequently all detainees were held in cells for 18 hours each day under unhygienic conditions largely owing to inadequate water supplies. Release to the yards for the remaining six hours of the day offered very little improvement because of lack of constructive occupation and diversions. “The men we saw in the yards either squatting or aimlessly wandering around, appeared to be without hope or dignity and those that we had an opportunity of speaking to appeared if not intensely introspective and morbidly bound up with their own condition, to be filled with resentment at their detention, the conditions of which they could see were deteriorating daily as numbers increased.”
For 18 hours a day in the cells, the men depended upon what they could mentally offer each other, and ‘from their previous experiences and activities prior to detention the nature of this mutual counsel can easily be imagined. We observed that their sole reading matter was usually the more dubious type of illustrated comic literature.’ In the yards the men walked about or talked in groups.
Not surprisingly, the Ad Hoc Committee came to the conclusion that ‘this arrangement of segregation on a gang basis, with such opportunities for intercourse daily strengthens rather than diminishes the former gang affiliates and loyalties and provides an opportunity for the leaders to exercise their domination and organise junior members’. The committee expressed their surprise that proper facilities for recreation were not provided.
The committee condemned ‘in the strongest possible terms’ the existing conditions under which Criminal Law Detainees were held. Absolutely no efforts were made to rehabilitate them. Nevertheless, the committee did not blame the prison administration. “With inadequate funds and having a major problem already in dealing with the inflated convicted prison population, these officers have attempted to deal with the problem in accordance with the means at their disposal. That it has produced conditions that would be condemned in any society calling itself civilised, is a reflection not so much upon them as upon the society that by failure to recognise the problem, and by having possibly other priorities, has permitted these conditions to arise.” So long as they were held in those conditions the committee could not visualise any time in the future when they might be safely released. In those circumstances, they could be expected to become more anti-social, not less.
The committee considered important four principles: 1. No detainee should be regarded as irredeemable. 2. The aim of detention, although primarily protective of society should be finally to set free detained persons as loyal and law-abiding members of the community, capable of and wanting to earn an honest and productive livelihood and who, above all, will not consider that resort to violence provides an alternative means of livelihood. This implies total moral, and to a certain extent, political re-education. 3. The principal therapeutic measures by which these rehabilitative aims will be secured are discipline and hard work operating in a realistic situation approximating as nearly to normal ways of living as possible. This implies that any proposed scheme should offer possible incentives for progress and disincentives for those who do not respond. For success a carefully devised scheme of dilution will be necessary for those detainees who are reluctant to respond to discipline and work. 4. The scheme should be primarily educative, teaching detainees the normally acceptable standards of conduct. There must be a clear realisation on the part of the detainees of the mode of operation of the scheme, a clear concept of its implications for himself, his personal progress within the scheme, and a sure knowledge that he can by his own efforts obtain his release, and that having achieved his release he will find a secure place in normal society. Briefly the present attitude of hopelessness must be replaced by attitudes of hope based in a sure self-knowledge and an appreciation of the normally respected values of society.