Never got touched across about a hundred different offices around Australia (I’m a consultant).
Except once: the pile was replaced by a $50 note and a hand written apology saying the guilty party needed change for the parking lot machine. I had less than $30 there in coins so… profit!
There was video.
I had to have the desk drawer changed (which made for quite a spectacle in an open plan office).
None were punished.
So, did the video identify the perpetrator?
If so, I feel like there must be more to this story…
The extreme punishments for breaking the law might have something to do with it.
I think social norms have a lot to do with it. It's like the actual social costs of being the one who broke the social trust is so high it dissuades people.
It worked for me on a lower level. Everyone cut queues and will grab an empty seat if it looks available at a packed restaurant here so I do it too but I never did that when I lived in Singapore because I knew that's not how things work there and people would genuinely be mad at me for doing it.
It's like a self-fulfilling, self-improving environment. Same with Japan and cleanliness.
State provided housing for most and a booming economy with low unemployment must help too.
Historically speaking, this is almost never true. People constantly think the solution is crueler punishments and we have hundreds of years of records of what happens.
1. aside from the obviously effective but difficult to implement deterrent of meeting everyone's physical needs
I think the explanation is that growing up in an environment where even small infringements are consistently punished makes people think about the consequences more.
So when a lot of people grow up in an environment where small rulebreakings are consistently caught and punished (the former is more important, can't punish what isn't detected), they learn from an early age that rulebreaking carries consequences nearly every time, and you end up with far fewer people willing to break the rules.
It's one thing to discuss something like a school campus with a small cohort of relatively similar wants and needs and a relatively small set of rules, it becomes much more complicated when dealing with the entire society's interaction with laws.
The mere possibility of severe butt-pain keeps all the would-be criminals in line.
I can definitely get away with it, but just in case I cannot - it's not a mere jail holiday that I face as consequence - I wont be able to even sit down without screaming like a baby -> The foolish criminal becomes wise and the hardened criminal becomes enlightened with this fundamental realization.
The Possibility of Pulverizing Pain via the Holy Cane is the Divine Motivation to Obey the Law.
I think, it's reasonable to suspect that demonstrative cruelty in crime punishment may have bad side-effects in the long run, but there are just a few cases in recent history where at least short-term outcomes seem to support the claim that it may reduce crime levels.
Those studies would be interesting to read, can you link them?
1. At a young age, you're taught to follow the rules.
2. "Someone's always watching". Lots of CCTV. Community reports.
3. Plenty of police who have the ability and time to investigate even the most petty things.
Trust in the system starts with 1 but is really carried day to day by 3.
Problem is it just takes a lot of resources to police, more than the fine revenue. But with CCTV and computer vision it's getting increasingly cheap.
The barrier in the US isn't cost. It's a right to privacy and a culture of distrust of government.
But I think the shenanigans of ICE are making people more aware of the importance of privacy. Look at the backlash Ring (lost dog superbowl ad) and Discord (age verification) and Nest (Guthrie case) received just this year.
It really seems to boil down to whether these types of people can be effectively sold on the virtue of tearing down the barriers of privacy and government. If they aren’t already implicitly sold to that then all it takes is for the powers that be to do a better job at marketing their initiative.
Unfortunately, the US and many other countries have chosen the other path (sporadic enforcement with severe punishment) largely because it's easier to implement. There's a lot of momentum to change this but it's politically difficult at least in America.
No one breaks the rules intentionally anymore.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory?wprov=sf...
Press freedom is limited in Singapore and that is a significant problem for its democracy. As a tourist this is unlikely to impact you. Otherwise, rule of law is paramount in Singapore.
Think about it: Is it better to have a posted speed limit of 65mph and a real speed limit of 75mph, and you just have to learn from experience where the real limit is? Or is it better to post 75mph and fine any driver as soon as they exceed it?
And this applies to most other laws too - we can't expect everyone to know all the edge cases so some leniency for honest mistakes is needed.
Surely the entirety of the law is encapsulated in your comment. Certainly you won't get in trouble for carrying something as innocuous as an empty vape cartridge. You won't get fined for crossing the road in the wrong place, absolutely.
Singapore is just an example. Its more invasive big brother can be found just north of it.
Not just the consistent small punishments, but the painful punishments. Pain is an extremely good, human motivator. Why destroy someones life and spend valuable taxpayer money with a 10 year imprisonment, when a rigorous caning session will be 10x more effective ? Many criminals will loudly thump their chest if punishment is merely jail but will dance on eggs to avoid buttock-pain.
Singapore recently introduced 24 strokes for scamming and fraud.
https://apnews.com/article/singapore-caning-scam-law-4f12fbb...
Pain keeps Singapore Polite!
Singapore's judicial caning officers (jokingly called "commandos") are trained to deliver strokes in a way that inflicts MAXIMUM pain while staying within strict procedural limits to avoid permanent injury.
Officers undergo specific training on posture, swing technique, accurate aiming, and using full body weight to generate high force and speed, up to around 160 km/h at impact, with forces exceeding 800–900 Newtons.
"Strokes are precisely placed to avoid criss-crossing (creating a neat "ladder" pattern) and to ensure consistency and full effect rather than randomness."
The explicit goal of the technique is to maximize pain per stroke: they are trained to induce as much pain as possible with each blow.
There are several examples of criminals who had multiple arrests and jail sentences, but after their first and last caning session quit criminal life and turned over a new leaf.
There is another side to this, which is that the police need to not hassle people who are not committing crime. Which is why you'd struggle to adopt this anywhere in America.
Combine this with the fact that Singapore is small and full of security cameras, and it create a situation where breaking the law carries a decent risk of getting caught as police will have the willingness and resources to investigate.
On top of this, a massive proportion of the population are there on work visas. For these people, any sort of crime or bad behaviour would mean deportation and loss of their job.
As an aside, here's an interesting CNA documentary on their prisons: https://youtu.be/tJqRPycWUDg