Singapore's Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) has announced the postponement of legal amendments aimed at expanding rehabilitative support for youth offenders. The planned changes to the Children and Young Persons Act (CYPA) were intended to allow cases involving young offenders to be heard in the Youth Courts instead of the State Courts. However, MSF has expressed concerns that the current legislative provisions lack the necessary flexibility to enable the State and High Courts to impose stricter sentences on older youth offenders who commit serious crimes.
Further legislative changes are needed to ensure the State and High Courts can continue to impose firmer sentences in more serious cases, says the Ministry of Social and Family Development. The Family Justice Courts - comprising the Family Courts, Youth Courts and Family Division of the High Court - as seen on Nov 1, 2024.
(Photo: CNA/Raydza Rahman)SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) on Monday (Dec 30) said it would postpone the implementation of legal amendments to expand rehabilitative support forThe amendments pertain to the Children and Young Persons Act (CYPA), and were passed in 2019 to allow offenders aged 16 to under 18 to have their cases heard in the Youth Courts, rather than being tried as adults in the State Courts. To maintain public safety and deterrence against crime, cases involving older youths who are repeat offenders or who commit serious crimes should still be transferred to the State Courts or High Courts.But while preparing to implement the changes, MSF and the Ministry of Home Affairs “assessed that the legislative provisions governing the transfer of cases from the Youth Courts do not fully achieve this intended policy”, said MSF in a release. “The amendments do not give the State and High Courts sufficient flexibility to impose stiffer sentences on older youth offenders where stronger deterrence is needed,” it added. In response to queries from CNA, MSF elaborated that under the 2019 amendments, the courts’ powers to impose firmer punishment - such as reformative training, imprisonment and caning - “are more limited than intended”. For example, in a hypothetical scenario, a 17-year-old commits sexual penetration of a minor below 16 years old and is found guilty by the High Court, but is not found to be unruly or disruptive to the rehabilitation of other
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