This is the true story of an idealistic belief, translated into actuality for a short while in the early 1960s, that violent, lawless men could find their own way back to decent society were they given a proper chance to work and create. The argument was that these men had drifted into crime because they’d never had an opportunity to know disciplined creative work.
Hundreds of them in Singapore were given this chance in 1960. Inside a few months, hitherto work-shy gangsters (hardened criminals most of them, unproven murderers, extortioners, callous robbers, psychopaths, rapists), transformed a deserted tropical island into an attractive, busy settlement with roads and water supply, huts, workshops, canteen, dormitories, laundry, community hall. Practically all the criminals were members of secret societies. Having built a comfortable settlement with their own hands, within forty minutes one sunny afternoon, they deliberately destroyed it and murdered the man largely responsible for making the scheme possible. With him died three of his assistants.
The island was called Pulau Senang. In the Malay language this means ‘the island of ease’. As a rehabilitation settlement, it was a noble experiment that failed. Why? Why did the gangsters destroy it, having toiled and sweated in the tropical sun to build it? No completely satisfactory explanation has been forthcoming. One belief is that the leading secret society chief on the island ordered the destruction of the settlement to prove that he was more powerful than the government. During the trial of this man, Tan Kheng Ann, alias Robert, alias Robert Black alias Ang Chuar (and 58 others), witnesses said that the decision to kill the man in charge, 39-year-old Prison Officer Daniel Stanley Dutton, was because Dutton had tormented them beyond endurance. Breaking point had been reached when he ordered 13 carpenters to work overtime to complete the construction of a pier which could be worked on only during certain tides. When the carpenters refused, Dutton ordered them back to Changi jail, thus blighting their hopes for rehabilitation. Witnesses said this decision inflamed the rest of the men and triggered off the revolt. Another belief is that the secret society chief had tormented the opposition to Dutton and had been waiting for just such an opportunity before giving the order to attack and burn the settlement to the ground.
Pulau Senang Rehabilitation Settlement originated in the mind of a political prisoner of the British. Though he admitted that he was well-treated himself in detention as a pro-communist subscribing to the violent overthrow of colonialism, Devan Nair was horrified at the conditions in the prisons for convicted criminals, and for criminal suspects detained indefinitely without trial. He was determined one day to do something about this.