Making Of Captains Of Lives, The: Prison Reform In Singapore: 1999 To 2007

Prison Reform in Singapore: 1999 to 2007

Chin Kiat Chua

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9789814452106
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Ciencias en general

This book tells a story of successful prison reform that brought the recidivism rate of prisoners down from 44% to 24%. In the process of this reform, the entire Prison Service was transformed from a custody focused mindset to a rehabilitation centred culture. This change was wrought despite the lack of enthusiasm of the then political leadership.

The author describes his personal role in the reform effort, the methodology used to engender change in organizational culture and the struggles for the soul of the prison service and the hearts and minds of all those involved. These include organizations involved in the aftercare of ex-offenders, volunteers who came forward to assist in the efforts and the families and employers of offenders and ex-offenders. The journey ends with the Yellow Ribbon Project that now embodies the rehabilitative efforts for ex-offenders.

The Making of Captains of Lives is a personal account of a public sector leader who has helped built a highly efficient prison system in Singapore, providing a strong case study for successful change management and public sector leadership. It will encourage the hearts of all those civil servants who believe in serving their nations and societies by devoting themselves to a worthy cause in their day-to-day work.

Contents:

• My Entry
• My Initial Steps
• The Lead-up to Visioning
• Visioning
• Re-visioning
• The Prison School
• The Rehabilitation Framework
• Strategy to Achieve Vision
• The First Initiatives
• Overcoming Resistance from Within
• Corporate Image Campaign
• Yellow Ribbon Project
• Some Insights into Rehabilitation
• End of Tenure
• The Leadership Model
• Epilogue

Readership: Government officials who are interested in prison reform, change management and correctional management, general public who are interested in general management and leadership.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE LEADERSHIP MODEL

The leadership model was such an important issue that I think it warrants a separate chapter. When I became the head of Singapore Prison Service, I thought that it was important to determine what effective leaders were like in the Prison Service so that their skills could be documented and transferred to those who came after them. The leadership model could also form the basis of the appraisal of the top talents in the Prison Service and identify their development needs. In the earlier years when I was busy trying to determine the broad approach to reform the prison system, I had no time to focus on this matter. By the time I came round to it, it was near the end of my tenure. The study I mentioned in the last chapter did produce something very worthwhile and not entirely expected. Unfortunately, I would soon leave the Prison Service and had no time left to see through its implementation.

The leadership model boat was christened “MV Sublime”. Each of the letters represents an essential leadership quality. MV representing mission and vision, made up the sail of the leadership boat. The hull was made up of the letters SUBLIME. S stands for shape the future. U stands for unleash potential. B stands for build bridges. L is leverage capability. I is inculcate nimbleness. M is master self and E is endeavour to succeed. In addition, four essential items in the boat represent traits that a leader must have. The rope represents attitude to serve, the binding force of us all. The rudder represents the courage to steer in the right direction. The life buoy represents like ability that will bring others on board and the anchor represents integrity that keeps us steady. I will describe each of these qualities in turn in the following paragraphs.

(MV) A good leader must walk the talk of the mission and vision. That is fairly self evident. However, many colleagues I spoke to in INSEAD did not understand the difference between mission and vision. Many companies had mission statements and many felt that vision and mission are interchangeable in meaning. Having gone through the visioning exercise, I was quite clear about the usefulness of having two separate and distinct mission and vision statements. The mission statement should articulate the values the organisation is currently adding to their clients and society. The vision statement should paint the picture of what the organisation aspires to be in the long term. I had use the matrix of vision elements against mission elements as a planning tool. There is no doubt in my mind that both statements are critical and need to be co-created and co- determined by the key stakeholders of the organisation.

(S) A person gains the right to be a leader because he sees further into the future. He does not leave the future to the wind and the wave, but actively steer a course in the here and now towards the vision. I see this quality as the most important quality in the top leader. (U) A leader must be a nurturer, who sees it as his job to make sure that everyone of his followers has the space to develop their talent and achieve their potential. He must do so out of a genuine love and concern for his followers and in the interest of the organisation. (B) A leader must be able to build bridges across groups and between individuals so that different groups and people with very different interests can be aligned to achieve a common objective and operate in the same team. (L) A leader must be able to use the strength of a follower to the fullest while avoid giving him tasks that require him to operate in his areas of weakness. For example, if an officer does not speak well in public but is able to be persuasive to a small group, he should not be sent to make public speeches but given small groups to steer. (I) A leader must be nimble, able to deal with ambiguity and make decisions with inadequate information. He needs to hone his instincts so that he is able to rely on his judgement as much as the data his has at hand. He must be able to see the broad picture without neglecting the important details. He must have an open mind, able to digest divergent views and come to a convergent decision. The ability to be nimble is something that needs to be inculcated deliberately over time and in order to retain this nimbleness, a leader must be able to preach to himself about maintaining an open mind and look for inflection points that will require him to change course.

(M) Mastering self is about life-long learning. A leader must never be complacent but constantly endeavour to master all the skills and knowledge necessary for him to do his job better. For example, most officers in uniform are good at managing operations but very few are comfortable with financial matters and dealing with the balance sheets. I had the same problem when I had to be responsible for the Prison Service budget as its head. I had to force myself to go for courses and read up and digest all the theories of good financial management and understand all the budget numbers. In time, I became completely comfortable with financial matters. A more subtle form of mastery is overcoming one's natural inclination in order to do the job better. I was one of those who had been shy from childhood and was not comfortable making small talks in social gatherings. In the prison reform journey, it became absolutely necessary for me to win friends and influence people. I had to master my natural shyness and learn to be comfortable with people in all kinds of social settings. (E) The will to succeed is the critical attribute in any leader. It describes an attitude that never gives up and a willingness to run any gauntlet in order to lead the followers to the promised land. Endeavour to succeed also speaks of boldness to try, moral courage to act decisively and the tenacity to stay the course despite adversities. I think the qualities represented by MV SUBLIME are fairly easy to accept and many good appraisal systems would have some elements of these qualities.

Among the four on-board items in MV SUBLIME, integrity and courage are also well understood. Integrity is about doing the right things with the right motive in the interest of the collective good. Courage is about taking half chances when success is not assured. One of my most used phrases to describe courage is “faith energises, fear paralyses”. Courage comes from the firm belief that the cause is the right one and what one is going to do is needful for the cause. The two attributes that are less obvious are attitude to serve and likeability. Attitude to serve is not quite the same as servant leadership, a term that has been much abused and misunderstood. When I interacted with trainees who were about to become senior officers, I often asked them why they wanted to become leaders. The most common answer I received was that they wanted to be in a position to make things happen, exercise power or make more contribution. The answers showed that the officers were quite obviously focused on what they as leaders could achieve. The attitude to serve answers this question differently. It is focused on what leadership can achieve for the followers and what leaders and followers can achieve together as a team. Such an externally centred attitude is what makes the difference between an ordinary leader and a really good leader. Likeability comes to fore when the team comes face to face with a serious challenge, when success is not assured and when risks have to be taken. People will continue to give their support and risk their own career and reputation for the leader only when they truly like the leader. When the chips are down, only affective bonds will have the followers and supporters coalesce around the leader.

Each of the quality I wrote of can be identified and developed to a certain extent. Not knowing about them is sure to limit a leader's chance of success. My own personal take on leadership in the Prison Service was contained in a speech I gave in an international conference. When I gave that speech, I was two weeks from stepping down from my office and it was a time for reflection. I attach this speech titled “Leadership & Innovation” in Annex 15.1 as an illustration of my thinking on the leadership model.

Annex 15.1: Leadership & Innovation1 (an edited excerpt)

Introduction

I have spent nine years at the helm of the Singapore Prison Service. These nine years had been very eventful ones as I led the service in the profound change of embracing rehabilitation of ex-offenders as our core function. One of the issues constantly on my radar scope during the change process was leadership. Is there something that makes a good correctional leader unique or is a good leader a good leader in any field?

Overview of Presentation

My conclusion after all these years is that all good leaders share common characteristics, regardless of the fields they are in. However, for good correctional leaders, four pivotal elements amongst all the other common leadership characteristics stand out. They are:

Character,

Alliance-Building,

Innovation,

and Thought Leadership.

At the Heart of Leadership — Character

If I say that character is at the heart of leadership, I believe few of you would disagree. Warren Bennis said that “successful leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is character.” These words are even truer of leaders in helping professions. Having a good character is as much about possessing good intrinsic qualities as it is about constantly bettering oneself. We often find successful organisations having leaders with a good heart. Whether an organisation has an altruistic mission is sometimes secondary. What is important is their core ideology, and how their ideology contributes to the betterment of mankind.

Charles Handy once said that “the companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world — not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul.” Walt Disney is one such organisation. Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is another one founded on the core ideology that the medicine is for the people, and not for profits. Their founders have left strong legacies behind, not just for their future generations of staff, but for mankind.

Integrity — Our Anchor

For corrections, we have progressed from providing custodial care to embracing rehabilitation as an equally important goal. In order for officers to perform these dual roles effectively, leaders need to operate with guiding principles well-grounded in morality. Abraham Lincoln said that “nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Correctional leaders have strong power and authority inherent in their roles. They are in a position to grant favour and exact gratification for themselves. However, I am sure all of us in this room agree that there is no room for unethical behaviours of any kind in a good correctional service, let alone corruption. How do we know that something we do is unethical? There is always the much cited “sleep” test. If it keeps you awake at night, it is probably unethical. I will venture an even more useful test: if you do not want your behaviour to be on headline news, it is probably unethical.

Moral Courage — The Rudder that Guides Us

In the Singapore Prison Service, we set up an Ethics Structure in 2000 to provide guidelines to officers in their daily interactions with inmates, inmates' families and fellow colleagues. In this structure, there are various channels for officers to disclose breaches in ethics, including a direct bypass channel for officers to disclose any observed impropriety to the Deputy Director of Prisons. It requires moral courage to expose yourself or another officer in this way.

Moral courage can also be demonstrated when nothing seems wrong. Many of you will be familiar with our Yellow Ribbon Project. We did not conceive the project because something was a miss. We did it because this was in line with our vision, because this will help ex-offenders and create positive ripple effects in society. At that time, it was a radical idea. The public was still sceptical about ex-offenders' propensity to change. Nevertheless, I saw the faith and moral courage of the then CEO of our partner agency, SCORE, Mr Jason Wong, as he championed the project. Though I gave my full support to Jason, many others were apprehensive. Together with Jason, my team took that leap of faith into uncharted territory. Today, many ex-offenders are benefitting from the project. More are offered jobs and given opportunities to display their talents.

Attitude to Serve — The Correctional Leader’s Calling

I believe the purpose of a leader is to better the lives of his followers. Leaders should always ask what would deliver happiness to his followers and lead them to it. As correctional leaders, we serve our followers, the community, and a social cause. When I first took over the helm as the Director of Prisons in November 1998, the first question I asked was, “what future do people in the Singapore Prison Service want for the organisation?” I saw an immediate need to bring people together to dialogue. That was the visioning exercise involving more than 700 staff, which saw the birth of our vision. I was only a facilitator in the process, as the vision was forged by the staff. With this vision, my job as Director was to lead them on this exciting journey towards the common destination. Once we set our minds on our vision, getting there is non-negotiable. Though some might become faint-hearted before reaching the destination, we need to place the larger cause above our self-interests.

Likeability — Importance of Good Relationships

Having an upright moral character with a strong attitude to serve is sometimes not enough. Unless a leader has that elusive quality called charisma, they need to be likeable to be effective. When I say “likeable”, it is not the same as “popular”. Likeability is the ability to work effectively with people from diverse backgrounds, maintain a pleasant demeanour and demonstrate respect for others in all their interactions. It is also about how to behave appropriately in different situations. Correctional leaders need to influence not just inmates and staff, but also win the community at large towards the correctional cause. We will fail in our mission if we are not likeable.

Mastering Self

To cultivate good character, leaders need to be self-aware and seek constant improvements to become a wiser person. Gene Mauch, an American baseball player, has said that “you can’t lead anyone else farther than you have gone yourself”. A wise leader who commits to self-improvement can lead better. I always believe we should spend more time to develop our strengths rather than to fix our weaknesses. However, the road to wisdom requires us to constantly improve ourselves. While we will never be perfect, we can always try.

As part of my journey towards “self-mastery”, I challenge myself daily to do things against my natural inclination. As a person, I am naturally shy and uncomfortable with social interactions. However, a leader needs to put his duty above comfort. Understanding that networking is key to building alliances and support for our cause, I made it a point to attend conferences and public events to find opportunities to further our goals. Within my organisation, I meet management and ground officers regularly through weekly meetings and monthly institutional visits. These interactions are important, though not pleasurable to me.

Building Bridges

Corrections of today can no longer operate in silos. We have had to answer questions about the rationale of our processes and the effectiveness of our programmes. For instance, with the increased number of youth offenders in recent years, we received more queries on our youth treatment programmes from many quarters. One of our Superintendents was even summoned to court to explain the treatment regime for our reformative trainees. I believe many correction systems in the world are also facing increasing levels of public scepticism and scrutiny. Thus, the challenge for today's and future correctional leaders lies in their ability to build strong alliances to win the hearts and minds of the community towards the correctional cause. Winning the mind is a relatively easy task, compared to winning the heart.

Alliance-Building with Key Stakeholders

To quote a personal experience, the visioning exercise we had in 1999 was anything but smooth-sailing. We faced much difficulty in convincing a few key stakeholders to buy in to our vision. Some were afraid that prisons would go “soft”. However, I knew that what we wanted was the right thing to do and we stayed our course. The next thing we did was to build alliances with people and organisations more sympathetic to our cause. One by one, we won their support until we finally found enough allies to advocate for us. Looking back, things would not have moved at that time if not for these allies who shared our beliefs. We need external advocates for our cause. They are more credible and more likely to be listened to by the public than any official figure.

Alliance-building is an ongoing process. Getting support from our key partners is good but not enough. We need to involve them at a deeper level. Prisons can only provide rehabilitation care for as long as the inmates are in prison. Once they are out, the community is where their lives are lived. Recognising the importance to enrol our partners fully in our vision, I initiated two retreats involving six agencies and NGOs (Non-government Organisation) in 2000. At the retreats, we engaged in dialogues to examine how collectively, we could achieve better coordination between in-care and aftercare. The retreats resulted in the formation of the network for Community Action for the Rehabilitation of Ex-offenders, or CARE network for short. Members of this network were mainly the Chairmen, Directors and CEOs of the relevant key agencies. We held regular discussions as we aligned our work towards our common vision. The formation of the CARE network was a major milestone for us. It had brought about greater synergy and allowed closer coordination of the work amongst the agencies.

Sharing Knowledge and Best Practices

Besides building strong alliances with key partners, we also build bridges to share knowledge. There is much to learn from others in our industry, such as having this conference to network, share knowledge and best practices. There is much more to learn outside our industry, as new and different perspectives will always add richness to our thinking and possibly shift our mental paradigms. By hearing fresh perspectives from others, we run lesser risk of being “boxed in” by our accustomed modus operandi and avoid the pitfall of corporate blindness in the long run. Working in prisons does tend to box us in.

Leadership Series in Singapore Prison Service

For that reason, we started a Leadership Series this year. On this platform, eminent corporate leaders are invited to speak on their leadership experiences. We had the privilege of listening to the CEO of Alexandra Hospital and the Chairman of one of the Top 50 Enterprising Companies in Singapore. They shared their thoughts and stories on leadership and we learned a lot from them. One thing that Mr Liak of Alexandra Hospital shared was “don't take yourself too seriously”. What he meant was, our actions should never be motivated by hurt pride. Indeed, while it is important to take work seriously, we should live and experience the fun and spontaneity of life where possible.

Innovation as a Key to Avoid Success Traps

In order to avoid becoming stagnated by success, i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title1
• Title2
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Bibliography
• Contents
• Abbreviation
• Insead
• Chapter01
• Chapter02
• Chapter03
• Chapter04
• Chapter05
• Chapter06
• Chapter07
• Chapter08
• Chapter09
• Chapter10
• Chapter11
• Chapter12
• Chapter13
• Chapter14
• Chapter15
• Chapter16
• Author