Reasons behind the safe streets of Singapore

Reasons behind the safe streets of Singapore

Ronojoy Sen

Singapore: It’s two am. Women, alone and in groups, are walking around Singapore’s hip Clarke Quay area without a care. If you move out of Clarke Quay into the less touristy parts of town there is no shortage of women either on the streets, at food courts or taking public transport. In the evenings it is a not a rare sight to see young school children, unaccompanied by adults, taking public buses back home from tuition. What is commonplace in Singapore would be unthinkable in Delhi.
    Singapore is one of the few countries that have seen a decrease in crime in recent times. In 2011 overall crime declined by 5% as compared to 2010. However, the irony is that you see very few policemen on Singapore streets.
    It is only on rare occasions when there are road accidents do the police make an appearance. Although it is commonly believed that sophisticated surveillance is the secret to Singapore’s low crime rate, the answer probably lies in the fear of the law in the minds of residents.
    Singapore has tough laws, including caning and imprisonment, for offences that many would consider trivial in other countries. But very often the law’s fearsome reputation does the trick.
    For example, many mistakenly believe that an American teenager, Michael Fay, was sentenced to caning in 1994 for chewing gum. He was actually penalised for vandalism of cars and public property, something that still attracts swift punishment.
    But the Fay incident still makes residents and visitors to Singapore very wary of littering streets.
    Rigid enforcement of laws has ensured that people think several times before committing a crime. And this applies to every other civic rule — from littering to stopping at red lights to standing in queue to board trains — which is flouted at will in India.
    Of course it would be silly to argue that what works for tiny Singapore will work for India’s teeming metropolises.
    But the larger point of the Singapore model is not merely harsh laws — some of which cannot be replicated in India — but a rigid enforcement of existing laws and speedy disposal of criminal cases.
    (The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at ISAS, National University of Singapore)