Comparative Crime Statistics

18 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) what is the current number of (i) Police Officers and (ii) crimes committed, per 100,000 population; and (b) how do these figures compare with other major cities in the world like London, New York and Hong Kong.

The Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs (Mr Desmond Lee) (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Mdm Speaker, in 2014, Singapore's overall crime rate was 591 cases per 100,000 population. Our crime level is low, compared to major cities, such as London, New York and Hong Kong.

This low crime rate has been achieved with a lean Police Force. As at December 2015, there were about 9,400 regular Police Officers serving in the Singapore Police Force. This translates to about 170 Police Officers per 100,000 population, which is low, compared to other cities, such as London, New York and Hong Kong, which the Member had asked.

Mdm Speaker: Mr Christopher de Souza, you have a question? Can I remind Members to put up your hands quickly because, otherwise, I will call the next Member?

Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah): Yes, Madam. Thank you. May I ask the Senior Minister of State, based on the low ratio of Police Officers to population that Singapore has, whether MHA is of the view that we are still confident of keeping Singapore's crime rate low? The Senior Minister of State also mentioned it is low compared to three cities. Are we lower than the three cities?

Mr Desmond Lee: The crime rate is considerably lower. In terms of whether we are able to maintain the current low crime rate, in spite of our lean Police Force, over the last five years, the crime rate has remained fairly constant, as has been the manning levels. It is a variety of considerations that lead to this – not only a well-trained, efficient Police Force that is in touch with the community but also good laws. Law and order are a product of good laws.

Nevertheless, I think the Member is quite right to point out that this manpower constraint is likely to persist. With smaller cohorts of young Singaporeans joining the workforce each year, it will be a challenge and there will be natural limits to how much larger the Force can grow. That is contrasted with a much larger workload – public expectations, more travellers, more infrastructure, higher demands on our SCDF and so on and so forth.

There are many strategies that we will adopt in order to tackle this challenge. For example, we will enhance our recruitment terms to retain, recruit and advance our officers.

We will also review our operations and revisit them so that we can do things better. One example would be the number of SCDF calls that are made each day. It is going up at a rate of about 5% each year. It is not feasible to keep growing the SCDF and the number of its ambulances and paramedics. So, we need to do better, we need to use data analytics to have a tiered and differentiated response. This is an example of doing things better.

Thirdly, we will improve our officers' capabilities, so that each officer can do more. I spoke of the fast response car yesterday, with more technology built in it to allow officers to respond faster and better. We spoke yesterday also of technology to allow us to do more with less. The Central Narcotics Bureau, for example, has hair analysis, compared to urine analysis for lower risk drug offenders. Hair analyses are able to detect drug consumption over a longer period of time. This allows us to recall these offenders less often to the station and allows us to redeploy these officers to other duties.

Lastly, of course, we will strengthen community partnership, which is one of the things I spoke about at length yesterday. Technology now allows members of the public to provide evidence through videos, to allow people who are trained in first-aid, AED and CPR to respond via the SCDF myResponder App to people who are in distress and know where the AEDs are located. All these will help us to do more with a lean Force.