Speech by Mr Edwin Tong, Senior Minister of State for Law & Health, at the Graduation Ceremony for NUS Graduate Certificate in Criminal Justice Course

13 NOV 2018

13 Nov 2018 Posted in Speeches

Mr Simon Chesterman, Dean and Professor of Law, NUS
Faculty and staff of NUS
Home Team colleagues
Partners of the Home Team
Family members of the graduands
Ladies and gentlemen
And of course all the graduands

Good evening to you, thank you for inviting me here to address you this evening and I want to extend my warmest congratulations to you.

INTRODUCTION
It is nine months of effort and not easy to juggle work and life commitments and at the same time, to be pressed every week, and inundated with reams of reading material and also, more importantly, the application of those concepts to the criminal justice system in Singapore.
You are the inaugural graduands of the Graduate Certificate in Criminal Justice, GCCJ, as Simon has been mentioning a short while ago, – very challenging, given your own personal demanding and critical work as frontline managers as well as lead investigators. So very well done to all of you and congratulations.

CHANGES TO LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK, OPERATING MODEL AND PROCESS
Let me touch on some of the operating landscape that you will shortly be seeing, or in fact, already know. But let me just recap were we are on some of these key issues.
We all know it is a time of great changes, I think that really needs no further explanation. Behind those changes, lie very much strongly in technology – artificial intelligence, AI and so on. They change not only the way we live, we function, we interact with each other, but more importantly, with globalization, the way we work, the way we transact and certainly, in the context of the criminal justice system, the way in which new crimes are developed, perpetuated and of course, new ways in which they can be apprehended.
So it is in this context that the Government is very much invested in making sure that the criminal justice system remains progressive, it remains contemporary, and it keeps pace, and maybe more than keep pace, but keep ahead of new ways in which crimes can be committed.
Our criminal justice system remains anchored on 4 key and fundamental principles:
1. Firstly, that our laws and processes must protect society and uphold law and order. They must reflect what social morale are, social norms of any country and that is what our criminal justice system seeks to achieve.
2. Second, due process and rule of law must always be observed; sentences must always be commensurate with the culpability of the offender and of course, the seriousness of the offence.
3. Third, our law enforcement agencies must be empowered to discharge their duties - no fear, no favour. Power to ensure that work is done, to apprehend the wrong doer and to bring that person to justice.
4. Where possible, fourthly, offenders must be given the chance to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. That is, again, one of the key principles of which we base our sentencing regime.
As you may know, we have made, and will continue to make, very decisive changes in the criminal justice landscape and framework, and let me just mention a few:
1. Criminal Procedure Code and Evidence Act have been amended to introduce safeguards to enhance the fairness of existing procedures. They ensure not just accuracy of the process but equity in the process to ensure the equity of outcome and one such example is the Video Recording of Interviews (VRI) that has been implemented since September this year. The VRI helps the court to try cases more effectively because the record is taken, if there is any doubt to what happened or what questions were raised, how the video interview was conducted, the video recording will shed a lot of light on this. It provides an objective account and allows the court to fully assess and rule on any allegations made during the interview or about the interview.
2. Second, the Penal Code Amendment Bill will shortly be tabled in Parliament, as you may have seen from papers, it’s currently in consultations stage, but very vast and wide ranging recommendations have been made to the ministry for consideration. Many of them touch on updating the current local landscape and local offences, as I mentioned earlier, new ways in which offences are being committed using technology. Voyeurism for example, has been on the rise. How do we deal with pornography, child pornography? All of these will be tackled in the upcoming Penal Code Amendment Bill.
As I said, we have to ensure that our laws remain progressive, they remain up-to-date and most importantly, they remain relevant to society. On that score, one of the key features of the Penal Code Review has been to place a lot more emphasis on what we do and how we treat vulnerable victims.
Vulnerable victims, not just in terms of the suspects and the offenders, but also on the part of the victims. The regime that we have, now being contemplated, enhances the landscape and the punishment against offenders who perpetuate offences against vulnerable victims and also seeks to place a very strong deterrent value on that by ensuring that the sentences are enhanced in all of these cases.
On suspects and offenders, police have completed a comprehensive review and have enhanced its processes to train its officers to better respond, especially to sexual crime offences; to ensure that there is a greater victim-centricity in the way in which things are done. So to give some examples:
1. There are now designated and specially trained officers who interview and manage victims of sexual crimes.
2. There is a revised training regime for police officers who respond to – the first responders – and thereafter, investigate these sexual crimes.
3. New police officers are sensitised to how sexual crime victims need to be supported during the investigation through a victim empathy video.
4. There is now a one-stop, dedicated and private facility for victims of sexual assault to undergo forensic and other kinds of medical examinations.
5. Finally, there is a multi-disciplinary interview implemented especially for children who are victims, to reduce the child victim trauma.
So you have one stop, where anyone – the police, doctors, the child protection officers – all come together to do one interview as far as possible, to minimise the exposure that the child victim may have.
We have put in place the Appropriate Adult Scheme for young suspects, with trained adult volunteers present during interviews to assist and provide support. This is being implemented in phases, and will be fully rolled out by next year.
Police will also pilot another scheme where Voluntary Welfare Organizations (VWOs) themselves station social workers at Police Land Divisions to assist and refer offenders with social needs to the right agencies. We do this to ensure that the intervention is not only immediate and direct, but also relevant because we take the view that often times, many of these offences has its roots in some other social problem. The sooner and better we tackle those social problems, the more likely it is that we can arrest the fundamental basis on which the crimes have been committed in the first place.

CONTINUTING EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Needless to say with all these changes, the demands on the Home Team officers become greatly enhanced – the pressure is higher, the demands are more – we are all stretched.
To fulfil this mission, the Home Team has to make sure that its officers continuously upgrade, retool and reskill themselves.
The Home Team Academy (HTA) has been spearheading the drive to transform the Home Team’s training and learning ecosystem. It’s a continuous process, continually upgrading and relearning.
Structures and processes have been revamped, new pedagogy and technology used, systematic trainer development put in place.
Having Training Transformation which ensures that there are different pathways for skills and knowledge development in different areas, bespoked and customised to the individual officer’s needs. So an individual may be front lining in different capacities, looking at different aspects to try and streamline and individualize the trainings as far as possible.
Continuing education and training comprises both skills and academic upgrading and let me just speak a little bit about this.
1. SKILLS UPGRADING
The Home Team is upskilling our officers at different points in their career, both in trade craft – which means the craft that they are actually training in, whether it is firefighting, first responses for emergency or investigations – and also to cross train those skills to ensure that the relevant officers get training not just in the area that they serve primarily in but also to be exposed to a corresponding and related area so that no one person operates that particular silo.
There are now structured milestone programmes to ensure that the Home Team officers are well trained to meet future challenges. Let me touch on a few.
First, the Home Team foundation courses for all new senior officers, civilian and uniformed, builds strong Home Team bonds. They develop common understanding of the Home Team heritage, the culture, the background and the challenges and also how the Home Team is responding and transforming itself to meet these challenges.
Second, quality leadership programmes put in place to build a strong core of Home Team leaders. Leadership and Advanced Leadership programmes prepare individuals for roles that demand greater collaboration with other Home Team counterparts. Senior Command and Staff Courses also groom individuals for Commander and Director appointments.
We also have the Phoenix programme launched in collaboration with INSEAD which is the apex leadership programme which enable super skill officers to drive organizational transformation.
The Home Team has also developed a three-part Civilian Milestone Programme, aimed at equipping our civilian officers with relevant skills and knowledge to be effective staff officers, managers and leaders.
1. ACADEMIC UPGRADING
On the academic side of the house, Home Team is also providing opportunities to officers for academic upgrading. They will continue to sponsor selected officers for undergraduate as well as graduate degree programmes in Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL).
Home Team Academy is also working with 4 Home Team Departments to accredit the basic course modules with the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS). Home Team officers can expect to gain credits to be counted towards the SUSS undergraduate degree.
1. COLLABORATION WITH NUS LAW FACULTY
Next, collaboration with NUS Law Faculty. Given the increasing complexity of crime, which I’ve mentioned, the exacting rigour demanded by the Courts in the evidence taking, in analysing the evidence, in assessing the evidence, the strain, difficulty and complexity of criminal investigations, different forms it takes place today – all of these requires urgent attention.
So on that score, I am pleased to see that the Home Team Academy, the Home Team School of Criminal Investigation, the NUS Faculty of Law, and AGC have collaborated to develop the Graduate Certificate Course in Criminal Justice for Home Team Investigators.
The end product, I believe, is a programme that strengthens the knowledge of our investigators, it enhances our officers’ ability to think carefully, deeply and rigorously. They know what it means to have the evidence in court, they know what the challenges might be, so that lends to a greater degree of care and also attention at the front end.
Going forward, the Home Team will make available even more programmes to support continuing education and training of our officers throughout their career.
To continue to widen and deepen the collaboration with IHLs, Simon earlier mentioned that the lecturers themselves also gain by running the courses. Indeed, I think one of the values of doing a course like this is that you marry out both the academic side of the house; the concepts, the theories very much more with the practical aspect – how things are done, what is needed, how to get things going on the ground.
There will be more avenues for officers to acquire new skills, take up self-study programmes and accumulate credits from completing modules that count towards formal accreditation.

LAUNCH OF NUS LAW ACADEMY
Next, the launch of the NUS Law Academy. The future economy is all about continuing education. There’s an old saying in Chinese, but I’m sure in many other languages, “For as long as you live, learn for as long as you live”. So I think that’s really true and one needs to be always mindful even if you are keeping in the same profession, same employment, to constantly be learning new ways of approaching an old problem; new methods of arresting; means in which your perpetrators, offenders that you seek to apprehend will practise.
So legal training, in that regard, is invaluable. Even for non-lawyers, I must stress. Because it trains the mind and helps one become more analytical.
I am happy to note that the GCCJ course and the related programmes, I heard Simon mentioned, a string of other programmes, is really the harbinger for more law-related courses for professionals in other industries. I think that is the right approach and I commend the NUS Law Academy for looking at that direction and to achieve all of this.
Two and a half years is indeed a short period of time. But I think, as I mentioned to Raj earlier, it reflects the determination in which the various agencies come together. Once you decide that this is the right approach, the right thing to do, it reflects the determination and the cooperation between the different agencies in Singapore where we get things done in a relatively short period of time.
The Law Academy complements the NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education by offering law-related courses for non-lawyers.
The Academy also aims to provide skill-based industry relevant courses necessary for upskilling or re-skilling to enable professionals to remain competitive in the job market so that they can make a bigger impact on the economy.
In line with Singapore’s SkillsFuture initiatives, NUS as a university is moving towards a lifelong learning paradigm shift.
This involves delivering flexible graduate-level coursework programmes so that more working adults can enrol in individual graduate modules and “stack” them towards graduate certificates, graduate diplomas and ultimately a Masters coursework degree.
My hope is that in response to the challenge of our time, the NUS Law Academy will grow from strength to strength, become a vital part of Singapore’s legal ecosystem, supporting adult lifelong learning, skills upgrading, and ultimately contributing to the nurturing of our economy in Singapore.

CONCLUSION
So graduands, as I conclude, let me just share my thoughts on how you could contribute and apply your knowledge to enable further and also enhance the MHA’s mission.
First, the attributes that you pick up on the course combined with your own practical investigation competencies and rich operational experience makes you not just effective leaders but very unique. As I mentioned earlier, you combine the best of both worlds. You are now in a better position to guide subordinates and engage with AGC in case discussion and decision-making. I hope you take that to a much higher level.
The course provides you with a fresh lens to find solutions to solving fast-evolving, complex, complicated and new ways in which offenders have practised their trade. You are primed to participate in the review of our investigation system, to progressively strengthen it – work within it, strengthen it, identify what you think can be done better – to meet the challenges of the future.
Finally, you can also contribute to policy making through participation in legislative and policy review. Ultimately, legislation, policy, rules, regulations must serve the purpose in which it was designed. It is of no use if the rules only serve to impede the functions of man and women on the ground. So to that extend, apply that fresh lens, look at the policies afresh and if you feel that there is anything that can be enhanced, reviewed and revised, please don’t hesitate to bring it up.
Good policy work really depends on the rich, and I would say, bi-directional interaction with people who make the policy and people who, like you, operate within the policy.
Finally, as you shortly will be receiving your certificates, once again, let me offer my utmost congratulations to you on this inaugural ceremony. I hope and know that you will put your new found knowledge and skills into good effect and press on not only by stopping today but also to enhance and carry on the lifelong journey of learning and continually enhancing yourself. Each of you, I hope, will apply that skill into the chosen field that you are in. And as I said, don’t stop there, continually enhance yourself, upgrade and find different ways in which you can improve yourself.
Thank you very much once again for inviting me this evening.

Last updated on 15 Nov 2018