I REFER to the comments last Saturday by Law Society president Michael Hwang ('How effective is punishment?') about the apparent lack of published statistics on crime in Singapore?
I REFER to the comments last Saturday by Law Society president Michael Hwang ('How effective is punishment?') about the apparent lack of published statistics on crime in Singapore that would otherwise provide a foundation for 'serious study by objective scholars' on the causes of crime and the effects of current penal policies.
I would like to highlight my own experience as a researcher. In November 2004, I sent an e-mail message to the Ministry of Home Affairs to ask for statistics on the number of judicial hangings for drug offences in each of the five years 1999 to 2003, plus the latest available data for 2004. I also requested a breakdown of the data into two categories, Singaporeans and foreign nationals.
I required these statistics for a paper I was to present at a conference in January 2005. Within days, I received a call from an officer from the Central Narcotics Bureau who said the bureau had no problem giving me the data. The table of statistics - exactly as I wanted - was e-mailed to me within a day.
I presented that table as a PowerPoint slide before an audience of several hundred people at the Institute of Policy Studies' Singapore Perspectives 2005 conference held on Jan 19, 2005.
I do not know, and therefore cannot comment on, the experience of other researchers, nor am I aware of current government policy on the disclosure of certain data. But it seems that, in this instance, as a researcher, mine was simply a case of 'Ask and ye shall receive'.
Derek da Cunha
First published in ST Forum Page,January 23, 2009
Source: Crime statistics: Ask and ye shall receive
http://www.straitstimes.com/ST%2BForum/Story/STIStory_329641.html
