Directorate General

The Singapore Prison Service is celebrating 75 years of service this year. A series of events held to mark the occasion culminated in a virtual gathering on Wednesday, 1 December. The guest of Honour - President of Singapore Ms. Halimah Yacob, unveiled a series of postage stamps issued to mark the SPS's anniversary and also received the proceeds of the first part of the fundraiser from the SPS meant for charitable causes. The SPS staff call themselves "Captains of Life" in reference to their re-socialisation work with convicts and raised an amount of 75,000 SGD (about 1.2 million CZK) and will continue the collection also next year.

A second online meeting with the Singaporean side was held on Wednesday, 8 December. The purpose of this festive gathering was to present awards for the cooperation and support of the Singapore Yellow Ribbon Project, with its motto "We are each other's second chance". A number of individuals and organisations working in the field of convict re-socialisation received awards. The Czech Prison Service won the award in the category of International Supporter of Second Chances. It is a great recognition of the project which has been successfully implemented in the Czech Republic since 2016 together with the Probation and Mediation Service of the Czech Republic and the Rubikon Centrum, NGO.

The Singapore Prison Service cares for approximately 10,000 prisoners who are housed in one large prison facility built gradually between 2004 and 2017. The construction of the new prison has enabled the use of state-of-the-art technology in the prison sector and has contributed to addressing the land shortage in Singapore which has a total area of just 728 sq km. The existing prisons, of which there were 14, were demolished and the land was used for development projects.