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Singapore  

Data from the Singapore Police Force site is illuminating. You need to click on the Statistics on the menu on the left hand side. It is not possible to link directly to their stats.

Singapore is an especially interesting country for the purposes of comparison with New Zealand, as it is roughly the same size (about 3.5 million in 1999 as compared to our 3.9 million approx as of 2000) and it is also a multicultural, industrialised nation. There are three main languages spoken, Malay, English, and Chinese (Mandarin) representing the three main cultural blocks, all with different religious beliefs and value systems.

Normally this would be a bit of a recipe for strife, but the Singapore Government seems to have succeeded in creating a safe, relatively crime free nation state for all its peoples. Perhaps we need to go to them for a few tips in how to pull this off. Their legal system is has some aspects that would not be compatible with our local culture and New Zealand way of doing things, but overall their system is working better than ours.

See this article in our Articles section for a more indepth look at Singapore and the lessons we can learn from them.