by Khushwant Singh

THINGS are looking up for the five-year-old initiative to match former prison inmates to jobs and resettle them back in society.

The number of employers willing to hire them under the Yellow Ribbon project has jumped by nearly a third.

Speaking at the launch of the Yellow Ribbon Conference yesterday, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam noted that 560 new employers had registered themselves with the Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises (Score) between 2004 and last year.

Since last year, the 32-year-old Score has matched 1,700 former offenders to the 1,700 willing employers in its database.

The Yellow Ribbon project enjoys a high level of awareness: A survey of 500 people last year found that 88 per cent knew what it was.

This has galvanised fund-raisers, who collected nearly $4 million between 2004 and last year for the cause.

The minister said: 'While the wave of awareness, acceptance and action has been spreading in the community...the inmates themselves have been working hard to regain the trust of their families and the society.'

He noted, for instance, that in May, 146 inmates remitted home $76,000 which they earned while in detention. The number of inmates volunteering for community projects also jumped nearly five-fold - from 175 in 2004 to 828 last year.

Mr Shanmugam also stressed the important role families played in the rehabilitation of former prisoners. The Family Resource Centres set up in prisons are where counsellors run workshops in family, parenting and marriage for prisoners to prepare them for life outside jail.

Mr H. Ali, jailed five years for robbery and released two years ago, is grateful for the help he has received.

The 36-year-old said: 'Thanks to the Yellow Ribbon project, I was prepared to start life anew. I was able to patch things up with my family and got a job as a storekeeper.'

Among the employers who signed up last year to provide former convicts with jobs is courier services provider Roadmaster Couriers.

Company partner Joseph Goh, 49, said the company's practice of hiring former offenders goes back a long way: 'A drug ex-offender has been with us for 11 years, and another for five years.'

He has now five former offenders on his staff of 100 full-time and part-time couriers, but said 'there might be more as we rather not ask about past criminal convictions'.

'We want them to look ahead and not be burdened with past mistakes,' he said.

Deputy Superintendent of Prisons Chow Chee Kin, who chairs the conference organising committee, said 11,000 people are freed from prison or drug rehabilitation centres every year.

The number of former offenders who return to crime within two years of release fell from 44.4 per cent in 1998 to 24.2 per cent in 2005.

FRESH START

'Thanks to the Yellow Ribbon project, I was prepared to start life anew. I was able to patch things up with my family and got a job as a storekeeper.'

Mr H. Ali

UNBURDENED BY PAST

'We want them to look ahead and not be burdened with past mistakes.'

Company partner Joseph Goh

This article was first published in The Straits Times on September 9, 2008.