Number of Generational-correlated Drug Offenders

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) how many drug offenders have children at home; (b) what rehabilitation support is provided to youths and children of parents who are found guilty of drug-related crimes; (c) what outreach activities are in place to encourage youths to stay drug-free; and (d) what is being done to increase vigilance and awareness of drug-related activities in the community.

We do not track the number of drug offenders who have children at home, nor the number of children of drug offenders who become drug abusers later in life. But we recognise that the latter is a real risk.

To address this, measures have been put in place to support families and children of offenders and ex-offenders. Singapore Prison Service works with community partners to provide them social support. Partners, such as Focus on the Family, The Salvation Army and Singapore Children Society. run family-bonding programmes within prisons. These programmes equip inmates with the relevant knowledge and skills to improve their relationship with their families and children during incarceration.

Member agencies in the Community Action for Rehabilitation of Ex-Offenders (CARE) Network, run programmes, such as the Yellow Ribbon Fund’s Yellow Brick Road and the Industrial and Services Co-operative Society Ltd (ISCOS) Fairy Godparent programmes. These programmes provide tuition support to improve the children's academic performance, befriending and mentorship programmes to develop the children’s socio-emotional competencies, and parenting skills workshop to improve the caregivers' parenting abilities.

In addition, the Home Team introduced the Youth Engagement Programme (YEP) in 2012 to reach out to at-risk youths and keep them meaningfully occupied through sports and youth camps. Under YEP, officers from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) also serve as mentors and conduct crime and drug prevention talks.

CNB works with the Institutes of Technical Education (ITEs), polytechnics and universities to establish youth advocacy against drug use.

CNB also works with the National Council Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) to raise awareness of the harms of drugs among youths. NCADA has established the United Against Drugs Coalition. This is a coalition of corporate and community establishments, such as clothing and food and beverage (F&B) companies popular among youths. NCADA engages these establishments to propagate the anti-drug message to their young customers.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is also working closely with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) and other Government agencies and community partners in an integrated approach to support at-risk children and youths, offenders and their families. To this end, the National Committee on Prevention, Rehabilitation and Recidivism (NCPR) was set up in April 2018, co-chaired by the Minister for Social and Family Development Mr Desmond Lee, and Second Minister for Home Affairs Mrs Josephine Teo. The Committee facilitates collaborative efforts in research and data sharing, helps develop the capacity of organisations to support rehabilitation and coordinates efforts to address issues of offending and re-offending.

I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the answer. I have two supplementary questions. First, tackling generational cycles of addiction requires many helping hands. Can we leverage their extended families or the community, such as school counsellors or the many community befrienders that we have, to strengthen the current efforts? Second, can the Ministry also consider assigning a dedicated case manager to each of these at-risk children when their parents are arrested, so that proper support and care can be provided to them at an early stage?

I thank the Member. We certainly agree with the many-helping-hands approach. There have been many of such efforts ongoing, actually. As I mentioned about the CARE Network, this network has worked in partnership with grassroots volunteers, family service centres and other voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs), and have been providing support to children of inmates and ex-offenders. I also mentioned about the family bonding programmes run by the various community partners, such as the Salvation Army and Singapore Children's Society, which are targeted at inmates, children and caregivers.

We have also launched recently in July 2016 a CARE Network Children Support Programme. One of the key features of the programme is to provide case management services to enable more effective assessment of the needs of children of inmates and ex-offenders and channelling them to the relevant VWOs for follow-up. Nevertheless, the thrust of the suggestion for us to do more and better has been well-noted and this is what the NCPR Committee will be reviewing and discussing, to see how we can intensify efforts to ensure that we can prevent intergenerational offending.

Sir, I have seen cases where residents go in and out of jail because of drug offences. I am aware that they have very young children at home. I would like to ask the Senior Parliamentary Secretary in cases where there are repeat offenders or in some cases both parents are drug addicts and repeat offenders, can there be a more systematic and proactive way of giving help to the children at home, to make sure that the children are not adversely affected?

I thank the Member. We certainly agree with the need for more help to be given to children of ex-offenders, in particular, the sad situation when both parents are incarcerated. So, we have to do our best in an imperfect situation because we recognise that parents play a very big role in the lives of children.

Given this imperfect situation, relatives would have to come in, the community would have to rally and help to fill in the gaps. One of the projects that we have is the Yellow Ribbon Community Project where grassroots volunteers visit family, gather information on their needs and link them up to the grassroots advisors, as well as to existing support structures, such as the Residents' Committee and various other avenues of help, including the Community Development Councils (CDCs).

Recently, we enhanced the Yellow Ribbon Community Project (YRCP) – we call it YRCP 2.0 – and we have been training volunteers so that they can make a greater impact. One of the key areas we are training them is to give them the skills and support to ensure that they can play a role in rekindling familiar bonds, providing positive pro-social support and better identifying vulnerable children.

And as I mentioned, one of the roles of NCPR is also to see what else can be done. We recognise their gaps and it is something that we got to make the best of in an imperfect situation.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary mentioned just now that we are currently not collecting data on the generational-correlated offenders. So, I am just wondering whether MHA can start collecting such data, so that all the programmes that the Senior Parliamentary Secretary mentioned, we can see whether it is working, and we can start to see whether the trend is going up or going down as well.

I thank the Member. We are definitely looking into that. But it is quite a challenge because some of these families, there has been a breakdown in family relationships. For some of them, they have not been in touch with their spouses and may not know where their children are. But we are, nevertheless, trying. We have a rough sense, but we are not able to share because there needs to be more work put in into this.

Sir, just now, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary mentioned that the community and the advisor can come in to help. Yes, definitely, we would be very keen to help. But from my last 12 years as an advisor, I never get any information on this. So, I am just thinking, maybe the first cut of help should come from those who know about the case – the agency which comes in to help. And then, if you think that the community or the advisor can help, then refer those cases to us.

We are very concerned about the children. Because you would know who the repeat offenders are. When they go in, you can check the background and then can also check whether they have young children at home.

Over 80 constituencies are involved in our YRCP. I will check whether the Member's constituency is part of it. But through this programme, the grassroots volunteers actually receive information from Prisons, and there have been regular house visits done. So, we have got quite a number of volunteers. So, I will certainly check whether the Member's constituency is involved, and we will link the Member up with the right resources to ensure that the Member's residents will get the support they need.

Mr Speaker, Sir, for the Senior Parliamentary Secretary. Ideally, family should be the rightful caregivers for children, but we know that our society is not ideal and there are some dysfunctional families where the children may be better off if they are housed in a boarding school, say, on weekdays, and they go back on weekends. Would the Ministry consider such a concept?

We will consider that. But for now, we would look at family as the first line of defence, in particular. Even when their parents are incarcerated, there are others like grandparents, aunts and uncles, who can help. We would actually look to family as the first line of defence.