Flat owners in Singapore will be presumed guilty of high-rise littering until they prove themselves innocent under a proposed law. As described by the Straits Times:
The presumption of guilt applies only when it is proven, such as through investigations and in court, that the littering occurred from that residential flat.
During investigations, NEA will ask the owner or tenant questions, including whether he was present in the flat when the offence was committed.
Even if the owner or tenant provides information on the identity of the offender, this does not automatically mean that the named person will be prosecuted for the offence. As is the case with current processes, NEA will investigate the information provided.
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Every registered owner of a residential flat will share equal responsibility when a littering act is proven to have been committed from the flat. The same applies to tenants in the event that the whole residential flat is leased.
The presumption of innocence is a fundamental human right. Every person has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The doctrine of collective guilt presents a difficult ethical question: is it just to punish someone for a crime he didn't commit just because he happened to be associated with the offender?
This bill undermines presumption of innocence. The prosecution does not have to identify the guilty party. They only have to prove that the litter originated from that flat. Then everyone who lives there is automatically guilty after 14 days—whether they were responsible or not. It is up to them to show that they did not commit the offence, even when it is extremely hard to do so.
Consider this scenario: the owners of a HDB flat invite their friends and relatives for a party at their flat. During the party, one of the guests throws litter down from the balcony. Investigations pinpoint the flat as the origin of the killer litter. The owners do not dispute that the litter came from the flat. They do dispute the accusation that they are responsible for the litter.
How are they supposed to prove their innocence?
The flat owners were present in the flat at the time of the incident. Thus, their only defence is to provide the identity of the true culprit. But if nobody caught the litterbug in the act, they cannot name an alternative suspect. Even if they name the guests, as stated by the article:
Even if the owner or tenant provides information on the identity of the offender, this does not automatically mean that the named person will be prosecuted for the offence. As is the case with current processes, NEA will investigate the information provided.
Investigators are human, and humans are imperfect. The Bill only requires them to show where the litter comes from. It does not require them to identify the true culprit.
Should the owners provide the identities of all the party-goers, they have to pray that the investigator assigned to the case is a hardworking officer who will chase down every lead, no matter how minor—not an underpaid overworked bureaucrat who just wants to close the case as quickly as possible.
With presumption of innocence, the investigator has to chase down the culprit and drag him before court to close the case. He has to do his job. With presumption of guilt, the investigator is handed a ready set of suspects. He doesn't have to look for the true culprit. It's just more work for him for no reward. All he has to do is cook up excuses to avoid chasing down other leads for 14 days. Then the innocent will be punished.
Think this is going overboard for mere littering? Suppose the litter was a glass bottle. The bottle shattered on impact, spraying a passer-by with glass fragments, causing severe injury or death.
What if the National Environment Agency accuses the wrong person?
Then it's up to the flat owners to prove they didn't kill someone—or face up to $10,000 in fines and 4 years in jail.
Here's how another scenario might play out:
A person visits his friend at a HDB flat. They drink beer late into the night before he finally leaves. He promises to throw away the empty bottles on the way home. Walking down the common corridor, in his inebriated state, he decides that a fine way to get rid of the bottles is to throw them down. The bottles broke when they hit the ground. The shards wound a passer-by.
The investigator reviews video footage and calculates the trajectory of the bottles, determining the spot where the bottles were thrown from. But that spot was three doors down from the friend's home. The owners of that flat happened to be home, and awake, when the offence occurred. Should the Bill become law, the investigator will be allowed to accuse an innocent family of a crime.
A fingerprint analysis will confirm that the person who threw the bottles is not a member of the family that lives in the implicated flat. But under a regimen of presumption of guilt, why will the investigator bother? The law tells him who he should accuse of killer litter. He is not obliged to do any more work. Why spend more time and energy on an investigation when the law already tells him who he should charge? His superiors aren't going to make him do it either, so long as he maintains a high rate of case closure. They have no reason to go the extra mile, especially if doing so will adversely affect their KPIs.
Conversely, the family has to prove that they didn't throw the bottles. They can't say they weren't at home. They don't know who did it. They didn't have a video camera recording the moment the offender threw the bottles.
How will they prove their innocence to people who already assume they are guilty?
Here is a third scenario:
An individual throws a bottle of Tiger beer out of his flat. The investigator makes a mistake during his investigation and accuses his neighbour of the crime. The investigator also discovers bottles of Tiger beer inside the neighbour's flat. The neighbour was at home during the time of the offence. He denies owning the bottle that was thrown out—but every litterbug accused of the crime would say the same thing.
How is the neighbour to prove his innocence?
Presumption of innocence protects the innocent. Presumption of guilt creates guilt where there is none—and allows the guilty to go free.
The National Environment Agency will claim that it has processes to ensure a thorough investigation. To which I say, the investigators are all human, subject to human weaknesses. Humans will always find loopholes to avoid doing more work than they need to. Presumption of guilt weakens the processes, by allowing investigators to get away with slipshod work and requiring the accused to defend themselves. It gives investigators an easy out, allowing them to close a case with minimal effort. The investigator does less work, his supervisor is pleased by the speedy clearance, and the minister approves of the high rate of closure. With presumption of guilt, every agent of the state involved in the investigation will have no reason to find the true culprit. And the innocent will suffer.
The investigators have all the scientific apparatus of the state behind them. The accused are private citizens without easy access to forensic equipment, labs and expertise. Why is the latter required to prove their innocence? It is the responsibility of those with the capacity for investigation to conduct the investigation—not those without.
The state may also claim that they will deploy only the finest personnel, who are hardworking and reasonable and excellent investigators. Then I shall say, do you want to bet $10,000 and 4 years in jail on that? Because those are the stakes the accused are facing. They have to hope that the investigator is hardworking and meticulous, not lazy and careless.
Hope is not a plan.
Presumption of innocence ensures that the investigators will do their jobs. Presumption of guilt guarantees that the lazy will not.
Proponents of the Bill may also dismiss this argument by saying these are all edge cases and unlikely to happen. Then I must ask: what is the purpose of a criminal justice system? A system that punishes the innocent is a system that creates criminals.
Those who dismiss the possibility of wrongful accusations will also dismiss those whose lives have been destroyed by wrongful conviction. They are not concerned about turning innocent people into criminals. Their concern is not protecting the innocent, but merely punishment—punishment for a crime, not punishment of the guilty.
Those who were unjustly punished for crimes that they did not commit will remember what the State has done to them. They will resent the system that ruined their lives. And those who supported the system.
Is the State prepared for the long-term consequences of this?
Does the State even care?
Welcome to the Slippery Slope
High-rise littering is a problem in Singapore. 15 percent of offenders could not be identified. The Government's solution is to accuse the flat owner of the crime, and force him to prove that he did not. This Bill is the kind of solution that a technocrat who lives in a low-rise landed property and whose performance is measured by KPIs would propose.
This move would surely reduce that 15 percent to 0 percent, or as close to it as humanly possible. It's a great way for everyone involved in the investigation process to hit their KPIs, and enjoy all the rewards that come from it. And all it costs is the weakening of legal protections for everyone in the country.
Once presumption of guilt is weakened in one field—even one as seemingly minor as high-rise littering—it will be weakened everywhere. Should the policymakers decide that the presumption of guilt works in curbing killer litter, they see no obstacles to extending this to more and more offences.
We could well live to see the day where all the State has to do is to accuse you of a crime—any crime at all. Then it is onus is on you to prove that you didn't do it. If you fail, you're going to jail—or the gallows.
Don't say it won't happen. The State is always increasing its power, especially in recent times.
The government enacted the Prevention of Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act to combat fake news. These days it is used most often against people who question the government narrative. Every appeal against every Correction Direction has failed.
By issuing a Correction Direction, the State is speaking ex cathedra. It declares that everything it says is the unassailable, unalterable, undeniable truth. To question its position is to deny the truth, and to deny the truth is to commit secularised heresy—an offence punishable by law.
When the people believe that this is the prevailing attitude of the State, how would they react when they are forced to defend themselves against a criminal charge that they _know _is unfounded?
How would society react when they fear that they can be charged for high-rise littering at any time, even when they know they didn't do it?
The technocrats don't care. Had they cared, they would not have proposed the Bill in the first place.
The Government continues to expand its power everywhere it can. It repealed Section 377A, which criminalises sex between men, and then amended the Constitution to protect the definition of marriage from legal challenge. It imposed vaccine discrimination and mask mandates during the Covid pandemic, treating the un- and under-vaccinated as second-class citizens. Now the Government seeks to undermine presumption of innocence.
The Government has established many troubling legal precedents. And there is no sign that the Government will stop.
There will be those who say that there is no slippery slope. The very existence of the Bill is proof of the slope. First the State arrogated to itself the right to define truth. Then it discriminated against citizens who challenged its narrative. After that, it gave itself the ability to prevent legal concepts from being challenged. Now it seeks to undermine the presumption of innocence. And the institutions that traditionally served as safeguards against sliding down the slope are silent.
The Law Society of Singapore is silent on the proposed Bill.
The courts are silent.
The media is silent.
The Opposition is silent.
They have been silent on the rapid and explosive growth in Government power over the past two years. In the field of politics, silence equals consent.
Can you afford to remain silent?
Do you consent to being treated like a criminal when you know you've done nothing wrong?
Today it is killer litter. Tomorrow, it could well be more serious offences. Should that day come, it will be you against the Leviathan.
The lawyers and the judges are silent on that possibility. The Opposition claims it represents you, but on every single issue that mattered in the past two years, most of them have remained silent. In their silence, they consent to you facing the might of the State—alone.
Do you wish to live in such a world?
I do not.
I will not be silent.
No one speaks for you. Not the Opposition, not the lawyers, not the experts. If you will not speak up, no one else will.
Those who do not speak up against today's Bill consent to tomorrow's tyranny.
Tomorrow's future looks like Babylon. A world where all-powerful beings destroy all humans who do not serve them. Only this time, there's no STS to save the day.