Something very strange just took place within the
criminal justice system today. Singapore’s highest court decided to delay the
execution of convicted drug trafficker, Mr. Nagaenthran K.
Dharmalingam, after he tested positive. The justices decided that common sense
and humanity should prevail and Mr. Dharmalingam, who was due to be hanged at
6am on 10 November 2021, will now have a bit more time until the next court
hearing.
This twist has made people in Singapore’s section of
cyberspace. Many are asking how a man who spends his time alone in a cell
waiting to be executed get covid. The anti-death penalty campaigners are also
asking how is it possible for the justices to stay the execution on the grounds
of common sense and humanity because a condemned man has a disease, yet so no
issue with executing him on the same grounds.
I will leave the discussion on Mr. Dharmalingam’s fate
to those who are working hard to save his life and as in my posting “DRUGDEALING 101,” continue to look at the discussion on whether the mandatory death
penalty deters drug crimes and if it does, how effective is it. I’ve argued
that whilst things may look rosy on the surface, they are not what they seem.
Whilst you are unlikely to see drug addicts roaming our streets, Singapore has people
who abuse drugs and that figure has stayed pretty consistent over the years. It
goes without saying that our regular drug users (anywhere from 3,000 to 3,500
people are arrested for drug abuse every year) must be getting their drugs from
somewhere and it is clear that while our “zero tolerance” may make the business
too risky for many, there are people willing to engage and profit from the business.
The government has claimed that Singaporeans support
the government’s harsh stance on drugs. Hence, it continues to keep those
policies. If you were to trawl through the online comments related to drug case,
it seems that the government is correct. Take the following story related to
Mr. Dharmalingam:
If you were to look at the comments to this story on
the Today Newspaper’s Facebook page, you will notice that there are a number of
people who think that granting any form of clemency towards Mr. Dharmalingam
would be a mistake. The common thread is that mercy for drug traffickers, even
if they are at the bottom of the food chain would send out the wrong message
and that any mercy would only encourage drug traffickers.
https://www.facebook.com/search/posts/?q=today
Given that Singapore has remained a relatively low-crime
society, its easy to see how people can have faith in the system.
However, as stated in “DRUG DEALING 101” the picture
isn’t as rosy as one might imagine. Singapore has drug users and that number
has held steady from 2011 to 2020. It’s been noted that even when the number of
people being arrested for drug use fell in 2020, there were more first-time
users. Somebody must be selling to the drug abusers and clearly not everyone is
being deterred.
There is also a greater concern than the number of
drug users that don’t seem to decline much. That concern is the issue of
whether the “mandatory death sentence for drugs” has become a religion rather
than a policy, particularly by the people from the top. In a way, its easy to
understand when people on the ground take a “religious” view on policies in as
much they see how a certain policy affects their immediate surroundings. It’s a
different story when a person at the top, who has a holistic overview of the
situation and all the data at his fingertips, defends a policy like a religion even
when the data is saying otherwise. Take this 2019 Reuters interview with our Home
Affairs Minister, Mr. K Shanmugam as an example:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-law-drugs-idUSKCN1UQ197
In this article, you have the man with probably the
best overview of drug related issues in Singapore defending a policy at a
moment when the evidence is showing him that the policy may not be working the
way he thinks it should.
Nobody is saying that one shouldn’t be tough of drug
trafficking. However, when your drug abuse cases go up at the same time as your
execution rate, it should be a sign that the drug dealers aren’t being deterred
the way you think they should.
One might conclude that the sensible thing to do would
be to relook at how things are being done. Our ASEAN neighbours are
experimenting and trying different things. Only time will tell if their experiments
will be beneficial. However, they are at the very least trying to do something
different in the hopes of getting a different result. We, by contrast, are
doubling down on the same thing even when we should know the result. Isn’t the
definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a
different result? Given that we pride ourselves in being the most rational nation
in the region and our government prides itself in being practical (we do what
works) rather than ideology driven, why do we treat a policy like a religious
text at a point when that policy is showing signs of diminishing returns?
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