This engagement was a survey I sent out to members of narcotics anonymous to fill out and sent back to me. The people who filled out the survey are specifically people who have gone through the criminal justice system for drug use. My questions were generally on a yes or no basis as to make it simple and quick to fill out. It also helps me as I can collate the quantitative data and make sense of it. There were 11 questions on the survey and here they are:

1. Do you believe Singapore’s justice system supported or did not support your struggle with addiction?
2. Do you believe incarceration left you better off or worse off in terms of your addiction?
3. Did you learn things inside prison that made it harder for you to stay clean? (e.g. where to buy drugs, from whom, cheapest places etc.,)
4. When you were incarcerated did you feel you were being treated as a criminal or as a person struggling with addiction?
5. Do you believe that being able to return to the DRC instead of long term prison encourages or discourages you to stay clean?
6. Singapore’s Prison Services reports that they put addicts through a rehabilitation process. Did you undergo any of the following
7. How effective do you believe these programs were in helping you stay clean?
8. Did the rehabilitation process you personally went through motivate you to take ownership of your own rehabilitation journey?
9. After completing time in the DRC, how confident were you that you would stay clean?
10. How well do you feel you were supported to stay clean after the DRC when placed on the Community Based Program?
11. Do you feel there is enough mandated therapy to fully support addicts into recovery?

In the survey the questions were either able to answer by selecting yes or no or they were answering through a scale of 1-10. I set it up this way because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t asking them to take too much time off their plate to answer my survey. I was initially going to get survey answers through the beneficiaries at WeCare, however it was very challenging to coordinate and I was not getting any email replies soon enough.

As my dad attends these AA/NA meetings, he was able to get people at his meetings (whom he knew have gone through the criminal justice system in Singapore) to fill the survey out. I am very pleased with the results of this engagement. This data aligns very clearly with the learning I have gotten from my other engagements as well as through online research. I believe that this perspective is extremely crucial for my understanding – as these people have experience in the justice system to back up their opinions.

Additionally, I think that it would be very challenging to fully analyse and evaluate this political issue in its entirety if I did not include all relevant stakeholders. Through my other engagements I have the perspectives  of a SANA, which is under the National Council of Social Services, the perspective of an addiction treatment center, and the perspective of a professional addiction psychotherapist. The Singapore governments perspective can be tied to the information I got from SANA and through research on governmental pages such as the Singapore Prison Service’s and the Central Narcotics Bureau.

Why I believe that the perspective of actual addicts who have gone through the criminal justice system is so important is because I have learnt that not everything the government says they are doing, have they actually implemented. A lot of government information on this issue is not available to the public. Therefore, this engagement has given me insight into one of the most important perspectives of this political issue.