My time as a volunteer

Howdy everyone, this set of fresh stamps just got dropped in my mailbox yesterday.

SingPost has launched a new set of stamps on the 1st of December 2021 to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Singapore Prison Services. Here are some specifications of the stamps:

Date of Issue : 1 December 2021

Denominations : 1st Local, 70₵, 90₵, $1.40
Stamp Size : 48mm x 30.5mm
Perforation : 13
Paper : Unwatermarked
Printing Process : Offset Lithography
Printer : Secura Singapore Pte Ltd
Sheet Content : 10 stamps per sheet
Designer : Wong Wui Kong

The philosophy behind the design.
Image source: SingPost

Since it’s an anniversary of the Singapore Prison Services, I would like to share about my experience as a prison volunteer.

I remember it was in year 2012, when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to join him as a volunteer for the Prison Services. To be honest, I was quite apprehensive at first. There was already a pre-conceived notion that such volunteer work would spell certain danger. Nonetheless, I took up my friend’s offer and went on to register my interest. Not long, I received an e-mail from a non-profit group known as ISCOS, which stood for Industrial and Services Co-operative Society.

We had to attend courses on every Saturday for a month, if I could recall. There were many misconceptions that were dispelled during the courses. We were told that our goal was to help the inmates who were about to be released soon, to reintegrate into society. Inmates who were well-behaved had the privilege of writing and receiving letters once a month. Prior to meeting them in real life, we had to write them letters to get a sense of how they would feel about meeting us and roughly get to know more about them before the meetup. Sadly, not everyone wants to go through with the program. Some of them may have the “us and them” mentality and view volunteer counsellors as outsiders. After all, most of us have never experienced prison first-hand. That is true, we may not understand what they had gone through while serving time in a corrective facility, and it may even be frustrating for us at times when they outright refuse the help offered, but we take it in our stride and remember that not everyone is comfortable with help, and that there are others who may truly need this service. Like my mentor in the service once said, “A rejection is better than no reaction.”

Course materials that we had to study.

Our course instructor was an officer from the Criminal Investigation Department. Through him, we heard many heart-wrenching stories of inmates. There was this one particular story which I remember, it was about a young inmate who was released from prison. No one came to pick him up and when he went back home himself, his family had already changed the door lock and denied him entry into the house - they literally disowned him there and then.

Many inmates who we were assigned to were either in drug rehabilitation, juvenile correction or incarcerated for having committed petty crimes. We had no access to other inmates who have committed very serious offences such as rape or robbery and we certainly had no access to persons on death row. Before we were assigned to an inmate, we will be given a short profile of them. Every mail we sent was opened, vetted and censored (when necessary) by the Prison Services before reaching an inmate. We were taught what to write and what to avoid writing. I can’t really share the fine details of a letter sent to me by an inmate but I can tell you that they are quite well-articulated! Through these letters, we got to learn about their life in prison, what they were doing before and their aspirations for the future. In order to help them, our duties were to befriend them and find out what they needed after they have served their sentence and refer them to the appropriate organisation for assistance.

I volunteered for about a year and exchanged several letters with a couple of inmates but none of them wanted to do physical meetups, they were comfortable with just writing letters and receiving them. So, I didn’t get to visit an inmate in prison during my service. Let’s all hope that they stay on the right path and do well in life.

Glad to have taken up my friend’s offer to volunteer, it was certainly an eye-opener.

If anyone in Singapore is interested in volunteering their time with the Prison Services, you may apply through this website: https://www.iscos.org.sg/

Edit 13/2/22

I have managed to get a few mail from prison to show you guys. I have taken care to censor the names of the inmates and partially block out the inmates’ numbers to protect their identity.

A mail sent to 1 Khalsa Crescent on the 30 December 2004. The now defunct Khalsa Crescent Prison was situated opposite of the former Admiralty West Prison. KCP used to be a drug rehabilitation centre and AWP was a medium security prison but both have now shifted their operations to Changi Prison Cluster B. On the top left of the pink cover, you can see the inmate’s number, which I have partially blocked out. At the bottom, D706 is the service number of the prison officer who screened the contents of this mail. On the top right portion of the cover, where a stamp used to be at, was cut away by an officer in case there was drugs hidden under the stamp.

The postcard that inmate L69319xxx received.

A simple message can mean a lot to these inmates.

Khalsa Crescent Prison. During the colonial days, this site was a barracks for British sailors from the Sembawang Naval Base.

Credit: Zaobao.com.sg

Another view of the now defunct Khalsa Crescent Prison.
Credit: Zaobao.com.sg

A postcard sent to another inmate at Changi Prison. You can see once again, the seal on this postcard bearing an image of a rose is broken to check for contraband. On the front of the card, there’s a yellow barcode to register this article as a prison mail. At the bottom of the barcode are details of the inmate such as inmate number and full name, both of which I have redacted fully or partially to protect the inmate’s identity. Beside the barcode is the signature of the prison officer who screened this postcard. As you can already tell, this is a postcard to wish the inmate a Happy Deepavali, the Festival of Lights.

This is a letter from the Ministry of Social Affairs, now known as Ministry of Social & Family Development (MSF). It was with regards to an appeal for girl who was locked up at the Toa Payoh Girls’ Home to get married at the age of 18. Give this letter a quick read, it’s quite interesting. The Toa Payoh Girls’ Home was a correctional facility that housed teenage girls who were either at-risk of committing crimes or have committed crimes but were not of an adult age to be sentenced to prison. The former Toa Payoh Girls’ Home has since moved to 1 Defu Avenue and is now being managed by the Ministry of Community, Youths & Sports (MCYS).