Instances when Appropriate Adults were Not Present for Cases Involving Offenders with Mental Disabilities or Young Suspects

20 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) in each year for the past five years for cases involving offenders with mental disabilities or young suspects, how many instances have there been where an Appropriate Adult was not present during law enforcement interviews; (b) how many more volunteers are necessary to ensure that all eligible cases will have at least an Appropriate Adult present; and (c) what will be done to increase the recruitment of volunteers for the Appropriate Adult Schemes for Young Suspects and for Persons with Mental Disabilities.

The Minister of State for Home Affairs (Ms Sun Xueling) (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Mr Speaker, Sir, Appropriate Adults (AAs) are currently activated for all cases involving young suspects below 16 years old and where the Investigation Officer assesses that the suspect is a person with mental disability. As I had announced in Parliament in July 2022, we are in the midst of implementing the increased age threshold for the Appropriate Adults Scheme for Young Suspects (AAYS) to include 16- and 17-year-olds. This will be done in phases and has started from 1 April 2023.

In the past five years, AAs have been successfully activated for all cases where the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) have requested for these AAs based on the activation criteria. That said, there may be extenuating circumstances which necessitate the LEAs to exercise discretion not to activate an AA for the interview. For example, urgent interviews may be required to prevent the disposal of evidence, detain accomplices still at large, or prevent the commission of another offence.

As of December 2022, there were 359 and 328 active volunteers for the AAYS and AAs Scheme for Persons with Mental Disabilities respectively. The service providers are the Singapore Children Society (SCS) and the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS). They are able to support all AA activation requests today.

SCS and MINDS publicise volunteering opportunities for AAs through social media channels and during their community outreach. The Member may refer to media features in October 2022 for more information on the schemes and the volunteering experience.

Mr Speaker: Mr Louis Ng.

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Thank you, Sir. I thank the Minister of State for the reply. Could I just ask what are the number and percentage of cases where the AA was not activated?

Secondly, could I also ask whether the same AA can be assigned to the young or vulnerable suspect for all the interviews? I think that would help to provide some sense of security for the suspect as well.

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for his questions. As I mentioned, in the past five years, AAs have been successfully activated for all cases where the LEAs have requested for the AAs, based on the activation criteria.

Sir, if I could trouble the Member to repeat the second question? I did not catch that.

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang: But, firstly, Sir, the first question really was – I think the Minister of State mentioned that there were some cases where the Police did not activate the AAs. How many cases were there and what was the percentage of the number of cases where they were not activated?

The second was whether the same AA can be provided to the same suspect throughout all the interviews rather than just at one? Or maybe that is already in the current standard operating procedures?

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member. As I also mentioned in my main reply, there may be extenuating circumstances where it is required – though it has not happened in the past five years.

On the second question, indeed, where it is possible to have the same AA follow the same case, we do so. But we will have to look at the timing of the interviews and we will have to schedule to the best of our ability.