Prisoners describe conditions as “psychological torture”
Many ex-prisoners describe their experience in prison as “dehumanising”. Cell conditions are cramped, and prisoners usually spend 23 hours a day locked up with almost nothing to do. They’re locked down for 48 hours over the weekends. Prisoners sleep on the hard floor and have no privacy, even when they go to the toilet in their cell. They can also be kept in “single cells” the whole time, which amounts to solitary confinement.
They are subjected to invasive strip-searches very often, which are humiliating and degrading. Prisoners are not allowed contact visits, and can only see loved ones through a glass panel or via televisit.
Drug Rehabilitation Centres are prison by another name.
All the respondents who were incarcerated for drug consumption told us that DRC was no different from prison. For the first 5-7 days, they are kept in an overcrowded cell with bright lights on 24 hours a day, without any time out of the cell.
Those who are detained under the Misuse of Drugs Act do not have a right to trial and are not able to challenge their detention.
When they are caught, the experience is usually very traumatising, as they can be sent to DRC without the opportunity to inform their families, and usually aren’t informed how long they will be detained for.
Formerly incarcerated people say the rehabilitation programmes offered don’t actually help.
Although the Singapore Prison Service calls themselves “Captains of Lives”, rehabilitation while in prison was described to TJC as superficial, sanctimonious and infantilising.
“Guilt-tripping” and “brainwashing” are terms respondents used to describe rehab programmes.
Little is done to address the reasons why people come into conflict with the law in the first place, and imprisonment usually makes it much harder for people to survive once they are released because they have been disconnected from community, work, technology and other facets of life.
Prison is devastating to prisoners’ mental health.
Prisoners who profess to having suicidal thoughts are placed in the prison psychiatric ward, where they are shackled to their beds.
They have to eat and relieve themselves while shackled, and are released from the ward only after they are assessed by a psychiatrist to confirm that they no longer have suicidal ideation.
Covid-19 restrictions that leave people who first enter prison confined in small cells alone for two weeks take a serious toll on their mental health. They have also meant that prisoners lose access to in-persons visits and programmes.
Research has found that incarceration leads to repeated incarceration.
Local research on the impact of imprisonment found that incarceration can make it more difficult for people to lead fulfilling lives, and put them in situations where they become more likely to come into conflict with the law again.
A study of 230 incarcerated individuals in Singapore, published in The Prison Journal in 2019, found that a multiple incarceration history predicts a higher risk of arrest (‘risk’ as defined in SPS’ own risk assessment framework) and that an individual is 3.51 times more likely to come into conflict with the law with every incarceration.
More than 80% of current prisoners have been imprisoned before.
Prisoners are, in many ways, the most voiceless group in any society.
Transformative Justice Collective 