Many of my students go through a missing-in-action period during this posthoneymoon phase. I wake up nights worried that something’s gone terribly wrong; I check online to make sure they haven’t gone back to prison. But I do my best to let them be. Then, one day, they resurface. And slowly pick up the pieces, salvaging slices of spent hope and patching together something that approximates a new beginning.
———
“Cluster A. And over there, Cluster B. Clusters C and D were never built because we did not have enough prisoners so did not need them.” Fee Leng, my SCORE host and a former corrections officer, is leading me into the heart of the modern section of Changi Prison. We scan our fingerprints at the entrance to the newly built complex. In my hands is a copy of the Panopticon, SPS’s magazine.
“Cluster A was built in 2009 and Cluster B in 2011. We are not”—Fee Leng laughs—“so creative with names.”
Behind the prisons, just outside the barbed wire, is a sea of warehouses. The two sets of boxlike buildings—all with orange-and-blue facades and a neat, glassy appearance—seamlessly blend together. Nothing in this area can be taller than four stories because the airport is next door, which means much of the prison had to be built underground. This makes for terrible ventilation problems inside.
We follow a path lined by trees that look like wizened fingers. Cluster A, Fee Leng explains, is primarily home to death row and long-term prisoners, and Cluster B, our destination today, houses those on remand or serving time for drugs—60 to 70 percent of the total prison population.
“This way to the VIP Lounge,” says the officer inside, steering us past paintings of pink flamingos and pulsating sunsets.
“Visitors’ Lounge,” Fee Leng interjects.
It looks VIP to me, with its plush red couches, bar, foosball table, and air hockey set. There’s a massive model of Cluster B in the middle of the room; the facility has one-man, four-man, and eight-man cells. Never a two-man cell, Fee Leng explains, because if something goes wrong between them there’d be no third-party witness.
Be the type of person you want to meet.
If there’s a will, there’s a way.
Henry Ford, Confucius, Abraham Lincoln, Dale Carnegie: their you-can-do-it wisdom is scrawled across every surface en route from the lounge to our destination.
It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.
The setup resembles a housing scheme, with metallic railings and trim walkways, and it’s quiet to the point of sterility. There are paintings of colorful birds and starfish, a wall of inspiration serving up more sanguine quotes on heart-shaped cutouts, a mural of purple Singaporean orchids—nothing that suggests prison. Not even the smell. There is, in fact, no smell.
But as we get off an elevator, the sound of walkie-talkies intrudes and an electronic door is opened. Here are the blue bars, opened to let us through. The world inside them seems, at once, an odd mélange of prison and preschool.
“Good morning, sir-ma’am! Thank you, sir-ma’am!”
The greeting comes almost as an assault, from thirty-six prisoners wearing blue T-shirts and standing at attention. This is the Rehab unit, part one of a ten-month program here at Changi’s new Pre-Release Center.
“It is an integrated criminogenic program, what we call a therapeutic environment, for prisoners going home soon,” says today’s guiding officer, a man of many smiles and fervent dynamism. This is Asia’s first and only such center, modeled after similar ones in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, where I’d seen it firsthand, at Boronia. “It has to start here, not the day we boot ’em out the door,” the superintendent there had said, curtly summing up the model’s ethos.
Living here are 343 men in ten cohorts. In the two years since the program’s launch, 530 men have passed through and all but 30 have stayed out of prison.
“Every time someone comes back we get a report, and it’s a stab in the heart,” the spirited officer had said, all sincerity. “My bottom line is my numbers. Must reduce recidivism.”
The program consists of three phases, incrementally allotting prisoners more and more personal responsibility. Each phase is color-coded; the Rehab housing block is blue. It’s a double-tiered unit with a shared hallway and common area, where a dozen shirtless men sporting an array of colorful tattoos are assembled at metal picnic tables. Black Vans sneakers are tidily arranged outside the doors of their cells, alongside a box for feedback forms, its instructions in Singapore’s four languages: English, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. A lone telephone sits at the end of the hallway—banned in all Singaporean prison units but this one, because encouraged family contact is part of the prerelease program.
Cohorts, deliberately diverse in age and ethnicity—“they must learn to tolerate each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies,” the officer explains—are run like communities, with their own disciplinary boards, elected leaders, and rules. Trained officers known as case coordinators oversee the cohorts and use restorative practices when possible. Instead of throwing the book at rule-breaking men, they figure out why the offense was committed and what restitution options are available.
“In my previous situation, a max prison, we didn’t talk to inmates, let alone run classes,” the officer says.
I scan the never-ending stream of quotes on the wall.
I will make it. I will make it. I will make it.
“You can be a model prisoner but a terrible citizen,” the officer goes on. “Soon they will be citizens in society again. This program is about bringing them back to that place. Unlearning behaviors and basic manners, from time in prison and before.”
He points to a rust-and-blue-hued painting. “Storming the Past. It is a maelstrom, and you are a ship who must find your footing. That is the symbol for Rehab.”
We move on to Renew, across the room.
Ready for his opportunity when it comes.
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
“Good morning, sir-ma’am! Thank you, sir-ma’am!” The prisoners at attention here wear green.
“Here is the symbol of this unit.” The officer points to another painting. “The tree, the hands—this is the next step in the growth process.”
Much of this process involves renouncing gangs, which in Singapore have Chinese origins and revolve around drugs, primarily heroin. Staff estimate that 40 percent of the men here are active gang members, and another 20 percent, sleeper members; our guiding officer is especially excited about the peer-led antigang program, in which prisoners sit in a circle and share emotional issues that led to their involvement with drugs and gangs.
“Prison has a lot of P’s—programs,” he says. “And this one has a nickname, ‘The Mother of all P’s.’ The prisoners hate it at first. It is hard to talk about life, harder for them than punishment or caning. These are hardened criminals and they cannot sit in a class and talk about feelings. They sweat; they beg for psychological drugs. At the end of it they have the option to renounce their gang. Many do.”
At the minimart station, I scan the color codes. Rehab residents are permitted basic purchases, via points acquired for good conduct: Milo, Oreo cookies, cards for their families, all stamped in green. Renew residents, closer to release, can purchase toothbrushes or reading glasses. Restart residents, nearest to returning to the world, are eligible to buy things like yoga mats, to help them adjust to sleeping on beds again.
Nizam, an Indian prisoner who stands with hands behind his back, is the supervisor here. “You may talk to him,” the officer goads, after introducing us. I hesitate; detailed instructions from SCORE staff included a firm directive about not addressing any prisoners during my visit. Nizam, unprompted, tells me he’s served seven years and has been in and out of prison eleven times. He’ll be home in five months.
“I am grateful for this program, ma’am. I am ex-gangster, ma’am, and it’s very different this time, going home, because of this program. I know myself
now. I will apply what I have learned about responsibility here, ma’am.” He bows his head.
Nizam wears yellow, the color of Restart. Their symbol is a cliff at sunset, and the men in their unit are assembled around a laptop, preparing for the graduation ceremony later this week.
“Good morning, sir-ma’am! Thank you, sir-ma’am!” Again, the assailing greeting.
A prisoner wearing small glasses shows off the PowerPoint they’re developing and explains that his cohort will sing two songs.
“One is a Chinese song. The other is Bon Jovi. ‘Living on a Prayer.’ ”
When it’s obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the steps.
As we walk on, the officer explains that all wall quotes must be approved by a committee, and many appear in Chinese and Malay, as well. There is also a prisoner quote competition.
“And here is the winner, in Mandarin.” He reads the Chinese characters overhead. Love is a light that continues to guide you home.
The yard area, essentially a massive gym, is designed to function as a community center, complete with a well-stocked library featuring English and Chinese novels, along with Buddhist and Hindu texts. Some men sit, chatting casually, behind a barrier labeled Responsibility, one of the center’s five core values; others play futsal, a popular game that’s banned from other prisons because it’s a contact sport, but permitted here as part of the reentry effort—they’ll soon play it on the outside. On the opposite end of the room a line of men are getting haircuts, also regulated by cohort, as indicated by a diagram on the wall. Rehab residents must get cuts in one particular style, but men in Restart can be cut any way, as long as it’s short and neat.
And with that, my tour is done. Fee Leng walks me through long corridors, toward an exit.
The darkest hour is just before the dawn.
———
Later that week, still processing what I’ve seen thus far, I take a walk in the clouds. Singapore actually affords visitors the opportunity to do this, having created a “cloud forest” at Gardens by the Bay. It turns out to be one of the most awesomely beautiful tourist attractions I’ve ever seen. Surely, I think, dodging hordes of Korean visitors taking selfies in the sky, a country that manufactured a climate zone can fashion a flawless criminal justice system.
Not that it has an especially dire need for one. The number of crime cases in Singapore recently fell by 4.3 percent to its lowest rate in thirty years. Strolling through dark, enchanting Chinatown alleyways at night, I relish this overall feeling of security. I also recall my first visit here, seven years ago. It was a brief trip, for a conference, but one particular experience at the mall stayed with me. I’d handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill; taking it for a dollar bill, she offered no change. When I objected, she asked for my number and said she’d ring me if, at the end of the day, the register was over. Yeah, right, thought the cynical New Yorker.
At 11:01 my phone rang.
“Ma’am, we have your nineteen dollars,” came the voice on the line. I was flabbergasted. What would it be like, I marveled, to live in a country so law-abiding? The locals I’d been chatting with this time around had explained that Singaporeans are spoiled by living in an “air-conditioned nation” of first-world problems. A weekend shopping trip to Malaysia, Fee Leng had remarked, is enough to make locals appreciate home. “Sometimes we have to be reminded not to take safety and economic security for granted,” she’d said.
The government engages in plenty of reminding, promoting a national narrative in which Singapore is an exceptional miracle of a country. “An island city-state could not be ordinary if it was to survive,” writes the late Lee Kuan Yew, who was elected in 1959 as the first prime minister of self-governing Singapore, in his book From Third World to First. I pick it up at a local bookstore—Lee’s works seem to be on display at every shop I walk into—and spend an afternoon on a bench by the marina, engrossed in it. “We had to make extraordinary efforts to become a tightly knit, rugged and adaptable people who could do things better and cheaper than our neighbors. We had to be different.”
The odds were against him. At the time of independence, first from Britain and then Malaysia, the country had virtually no domestic market and poor education levels, and it relied almost fully on British handouts. Sandwiched between Indonesia and Malaysia, two much larger powers, it also had to manage a potentially divisive ethnic mix—about 75 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay, and 7 percent Indian. In 1964 there were race riots. But under Lee’s guidance peace prevailed and the country climbed from a per capita GDP of $400 in 1959 to $52,052 in 2012.
Lee achieved this by plotting infrastructure, creating an economic development bank, building industrial parks to attract American and European investors, and paying government employees generously so as to reduce corruption; all were part of his effort to merge the competitive spirit of capitalism with the group solidarity bred by socialism. Home ownership gives everyone a stake in society, so Singaporeans can buy spacious public housing at affordable rates, with a wait that’s rarely longer than six months; residential quotas promote racial integration. Foreign aid was anathema to Lee, as was welfare; instead, community centers and citizen service play the role of brother’s keeper. He also beautified the airport and city to create strong first impressions for investors, launched a green movement and a government unit to care for the lush gardens and trees planted, banned cigarette ads and, yes, chewing gum, and even promoted the end of “Third World habits,” like spitting in the street.
Reading Lee’s book reminds me of a connection I had forgotten between Singapore and the place I began my journey: Rwanda. President Paul Kagame has publicly stated that he modeled postgenocide Rwanda after postcolonial Singapore, taking pages from Lee’s book. He created an attractive investment environment, reduced corruption, built infrastructure for a high-tech economy, and so on. As is true of Singaporeans, almost all Rwandans have health insurance and access to education. They live in lands of proficiency and productivity, lands where corporate-speak acronyms reign. Rwanda and Singapore are both grand regional exceptions.
And I also know there are costs associated with being such exceptions, such “oases” of social and economic stability. These include a resounding lack of social liberties, big scale and small; bans on things like plastic bags, in Rwanda, and, here, chewing gum; and a government-controlled press and curtailed free speech. “If this is a ‘nanny state,’ ” Lee writes, addressing his critics, “I am proud to have fostered one.” Later I find a playful local Web site mocking this nannyism, with a list of Singaporean characteristics. Number 42 speaks to the country’s efficiency: “You get irritated if you don’t see a sign telling you how long your wait’s going to be for a bus, a train, or the expressway.” But plenty of others parody the price paid for it. Number 10: “You’ve lost your ability to criticize people in higher positions than you, even if they’re wrong.” Number 55: “You agree that what the government thinks of your personal habits and lifestyle should determine whether you get a condo and how much you pay for it.” And number 27: “You justify every argument with the phrase ‘in order for us to be competitive in the twenty-first century.’ ”
This last one is especially mighty. Because being a miraculous exception means you also exist in a state of perpetual anxiety, always this close to becoming just like the neighbors. Fragility makes it easy to justify anything. Do you want another genocide? More race riots? Economic and political upheaval, as in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Congo? Then trust your government and don’t ask too many questions, which might upset the hard-won social order you enjoy daily.
That evening, at the satay stands outside my hotel, I’m still mulling over Lee and this grand social compromise. I’m joined by two progressive law students introduced to me via e-mail by a friend back home. They run an anti–death penalty campaign here and will soon launch one against caning.
“That one will be an even harder sell,” Damien tells me. “S
ingaporeans are so attached to punishment as a whole, and especially corporal punishment. And also they think caning is like the spanking that every kid here gets, growing up. They don’t realize what it really is. We will need to use photos. Have you seen a caning? Do you know that flesh literally flies?” He shakes his head in disgust.
“The government, see, they point to the United States, when there’s a school shooting or something tragic. And they say, you want that? America is like, democracy gone wrong. So if you don’t want all those tragedies and that crime, keep quiet and be content with the status quo.”
Fear is the most powerful instrument of social control. This is true in Rwanda and Singapore but also Australia and America—where it fueled the birth of mass incarceration to begin with.
But still, I say to Damien, the safety, the ease, the lifestyle. In Singapore one never has to, say, haggle with a taxi man, Ugandastyle; all meters are locked and monitored. Even simple, daily quality-of-life gifts like that are hard to scoff at. He nods, appreciating the dilemma. And for several moments we eat in silence.
“I’m surprised they even let you talk to prisoners,” Damien remarks as we part. I explain that I barely have, actually, thus far. In fact during my journey, the countries where I’ve had the least amount of contact with people in prison have been Rwanda and right here. This makes sense; prisoners are warts on the national narrative of engineered social perfection. They’re disruptions to the well-oiled political machine, so they must be quarantined, punished, corrected, silenced.
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