By Sia Ling Xin

NEW penalties that allow first-time, low-risk offenders to continue living in the community while serving their sentence will be implemented by the end of the year.

For example, those with mental illnesses may be sentenced to undergo psychiatric treatment instead of being jailed.

These new forms of penalties will "enhance the courts' flexibility to mete out an appropriate sentence", Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng said yesterday. "Imprisonment may not be the most appropriate solution for all cases."

In some cases, community-based options may work better, he added.

But such community-based sentences can be meted only to those who do not commit serious crimes, and do not pose a threat to public safety, he said.

The new sentences include the Mandatory Treatment Order, which will require an offender to undergo psychiatric treatment for up to two years in lieu of imprisonment.

It will be implemented by the Ministry of Health and the Institute of Mental Health.

Another order, called the Day Reporting Order, will require the offender to report regularly to a reporting centre run by the Singapore Prisons Service and undergo programmes.

Offenders may potentially be electronically tagged to track their whereabouts for up to 12 months.

A third order, the Short Detention Order, will send offenders to a brief stint in jail of up to 14 days.

The Community Service Order, now administered by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports for probationers and juveniles, will be extended to adult offenders.

These orders are not mutually exclusive, and more than one may be imposed to maximise the benefits, Mr Wong said.

Mr Nicholas Gabriel Lim, managing director of psychological- services provider iGROW, said that it is heartening to see the Government looking into the welfare of offenders and their families, and taking the effects of imprisonment into consideration when meting out sentences.

However, "the flipside is that people might think 'Hey, I won't have to go to jail, it's no big deal' and take advantage of these orders", warned Mr Lim.

To prevent that, proper monitoring should be done to ensure that those who are serving these orders do not take them lightly, he said.

Mr Wong was speaking at the official opening of the second major cluster of prisons within the Changi Prison Complex, called Cluster B, which can take up to 5,600 inmates.

Inmates from 10 of the 13 prison institutions here have already been moved to Cluster A and B of the complex.

In future, two more clusters will be built within the complex and the inmates from the remaining three prison facilities will be transferred there, the Singapore Prisons Service said yesterday.

The building of the clusters is part of a masterplan, conceptualised in 2000, to modernise and centralise the prisons here.

The clustering of prisons allows the reaping of much synergy, such as economies of scale, increased efficiency from centralised services and the freeing up of land previously occupied by the older prisons, said Mr Wong.

lingxin@sph.com.sg

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