Wrongful Convictions in Singapore: A General Survey of Risk Factors

• Main Authors: CHEN, Siyuan, CHUA, Eunice
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Courts; Judges; Public Law and Legal Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/933; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sol_research/article/1932/viewcontent/WrongfulConvictions_2010_SingLRev.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This article seeks to raise awareness about the potential for wrongful convictions in Singapore by analysing the factors commonly identified as contributing towards wrongful convictions in other jurisdictions, including institutional failures and suspect evidence. It also considers whether the social conditions in Singapore are favourable to discovering and publicising wrongful convictions. The authors come to the conclusion that Singapore does well on a number of fronts and no sweeping reforms are necessary However there are areas of risk viz the excessive focus on crime control rather than due process, which require some tweaking of the system.