absolutum dominium

ah yes.

my mom was the first one to inform me of the police's latest announcement that they would report any under-17 children to their parents if they found them loitering outside after 11pm.

she sounded as if the idea was the most ludicrous she'd ever heard. she mentioned this sentence with the phrase "police state" in succession.

and hands up all of you who heard about this and thought about a world like orwell's '1984'?

well, but according to the police in the channel news asia article, it's not a curfew.

in fact, according to the official report:

"Police advice parents not to get excited if they do get a letter informing of their children's activities at public places after 11pm.
Police say parent can go to the nearest neighbourhood police centre to seek clarifications and find out what they can do to address the situation.
Police emphasise the letter does not reflect any judgement on them or the child."

(note: i know tt these paragraphs contain a number of grammarical and spelling mistakes [i.e. it is "ädvise" and not "advice" and it should be "the police" and not "police" per se]. but i'm not editting this so as to uphold the um... 'journalistic integrity' of this article. and maybe the hope tt the writer wrote this at 3am at night after 48 hours without sleep and no coffee.)

right.

how would you feel as a parent if you received a letter from the police about your child? or if you were a teenager having supper with your friends at fong seng and the next morning or 2 days after your parents got a letter telling them what you were having for supper two nights ago?

i know the rationale for this. the problem is tt when you're below 16 and you do stuff tt would otherwise get you in trouble (i.e. shoplifting or eating potato chips instore without paying), you usually get off with a warning and at most, probation. you don't actually get charged.

however, in spite of this for every case tt gets into lock-up, the police have to open a new file for each and every one of them with no exceptions, whether they eventually charge or not. as such, there is a mountain of paperwork to do even when there aren't really cases to solve. and it becomes a hassle, esp as teenagers are apparently rude, disrespectful and unafraid of the law or of officers of the law (yeah i know. i'm going to draw flak from all sides here).

so the police's solution: impose tt 11pm curfew *cough cough*... oops. it's not a curfew. erm. i'm not sure what to call it then. hmm. tt 11pm thingamajig i guess.

but the thing is if i look at it from any other point of view apart from the force's official stand, it doesn't make any fucking sense to me.

we are living in the goddamn 21st century for crying out loud. liberalisation schliberalisation. we're supposed to be some open world-class city. we have 24 hour eating places, shopping centres, entertainment areas. we want to be a vibrant tourist hub (heaven help me if i hear another "hub" word...). we're opening 2 fucking casinos to pander mainly to the rich chinese and indonesian tourists in the region. if we can disregard our morals for tt (okay. this is my personal opinion. fuck the money and the tourist dollars. i know tt the casinos are def going to ensure tt i will always have a job, but it's extra work tt i can do without. and society too. but then again politics and moral are divergent entities), why the fuck are we moving 40 years back into the past and curbing our youth?

yeah. i understand about the rise in juvenile crimes. i understand the so-called rationale regarding the risk of youth being targets for crime, or being perpetrators of crime themselves. but don't you see? crime is a symptom, not a fucking root cause. it's a symptom of something much deeper and more troubling, more due to things like socio-economic factors, to money and the lack thereof, to a system tt maybe suggests tt the only way out of a poverty trap is thru illegal means, or tt delinquency is the only cure to boredom, or even to a culture where family relations are no longer enough to keep the kids out of trouble.

one of my criticisms about the singapore system, is tt we have a knack for curbing the symptoms, but rarely ever the root causes. we seem to assume tt just because we can't see something, it isn't there. just because you don't see kids on the streets after 11pm, they're not there to cause trouble? it doesn't mean tt they won't be in trouble, or tt society will be any better for it. "out of sight, out of mind" is the mentality of a 1-year old. you know, the kind whereby the cognitive skills have not yet kicked in, such tt if it closes its eyes and no longer sees you, it thus assumes tt you are no longer there?

i know tt singapore is very economically-successful, and i am both proud and appreciative of tt. but at the same time i feel tt we may never really be a developed country for some time to come. we don't fit the category of a developed country. sure, we've got the wealth, we've got the money, we're more bustling and vibrant than a lot of other cities - some of which are in developed countries (as listed in global magazines such as the economist); but we seem to have a third-world mentality. i never really thought about tt until i came here. during my eu law module, i was no less than surprised by the amount of emphasis placed on the importance of something like environmental law. and my professor told me tt the reason for this was tt earlier on when the eu was still developing, they had pushed the importance of the environment to the bottom of their priorities, citing the importance of concentrating on economic productivity and growth (does this argument sound familiar? link it to politics and the concept of democracy)... until some people got the bright idea tt this was a third world mentality. a really developed nation is able to consider and balance all factors. sure tt there has to be some measure of opportunity cost somewhere or other, and tt some areas have to have more importance placed on them than others... but still, there is more balance.

and subsequently, a better quality of life.

i mean, sure singapore has a high standard of living, i'm not quabbling with tt. but seriously, everytime you ask your friends in singapore how it's going, you always *always* get answers like:

1) life sucks
2) damn sian
3) bored
4) stressed with work

like wtf. are we really a society of unhappy dumb boring fucks? have we really nothing better to do with our lives other than whine and complain (okay. i have a low tolerance for people who cannot see beyond themselves and move above this recurring state of pathetic self-pity)?

one of my mottos is this: "bored people are boring people." thus as far as i can help it, i never allow myself to get bored (the only times i do get bored is when i am in something like a really draggy intellectual property class... sorry but as long as trademarks and patents are inanimate non-living entities, they will never interest me. anyway tt's forgivable coz i *need* the education. sigh.)

but i don't think tt singaporeans are boring per se. in fact, a lot of us are interesting. and a lot of the people i know (thank god) are interesting. and fun to be with. i think tt there is something wrong with our culture, tt makes us the way we are.

i mean in canada, you can say hi to any one in the lift, around the store, at the counter etc. whenever you ask "hey! how's it going?", the answer is always "i'm good." or "ëxcellent!" or something along those lines. and even if you aren't exactly feeling stellar before, trust me after this exchange you *always* feel uplifted.

and yes i've majorly digressed again, but you get what i mean, don't you?

anyway my point is... if the police want to lessen the paperwork...

why not just do away with the paperwork involved for everyone in lock up? why not just limit it to cases whereby they are charged?

i mean, if the case is closed, the case *is* closed. if the kid's not charged, the kid's not charged. why bother with paperwork tt won't be around in a while?

it's a ridiculous waste of resources tt can be put to better use. yes the police force is efficient, but seriously, i don't think tt the force should put so much emphasis on paper work.

look at other forces like the new york police department, the vancouver police department... any other police department.

no one puts in as much paper work as we do. and they still function all right. they get more cases to deal with, they get more tough stuff to handle, and they do all right all the same. we got less crimes, and yet we have so much fucking work.

don't blame the kids. you're only young once. and while i understand the difficulties with having to deal with errant kids who come into lock-up for getting caught for things like taking stuff from stores, especially if you get a couple dozen cases of tt, underage sex, disorderly behaviour etc...

maybe it's time to look at our own laws and our own procedures.

are we criminalising too many things, some of which shouldn't even be criminalised? *cough s377 cough* are we putting too much weight on procedures and sets of rules regarding things tt need not even have them?

i mean. it's understandable tt we have everything the way they are right now. we are after all, singapore. kiasu like hell and we'll put everything in the rule book as much as possible.

but seriously. it's the goddamn 21st century. we want to be creative. we want to open up. there is no way to encourage creativity among our kids if we won't even allow them to go out at night or to do anything. there is no way to encourage so-called "thinking out of the box" is society continues to place some kind of moral burden (if this police thing isn't putting a moral/legal dimension to something as small as staying out with friends, i don't know what is) on our kids.

if we keep on regulating, we've gone back to 1984 all over again.

i'm just waiting for the advent of the thought police.

and then, "truth" will really be what written by those in power.