“Us” and “Them”

Abstract

This research is the first empirical study to examine ethnic minority gangs which have emerged within the Singapore prisons. It argues that the distinctive forms these entities have assumed in terms of history, structure, subculture, geography, and ideologies have to be appreciated in the context of the social, economic, and political dynamics that exist in wider Singapore society, particularly between the formal social control institutions and the institutionalized Chinese secret societies. What is sociologically revealing is that although the latter operating within the prisons tend to recruit non-Chinese inmates and is therefore more “out-group” orientated in their recruitment strategies, memberships into ethnic minority gangs such as the “Omega” and “Sarah Jumbo”—the two important minority gangs in prisons—are restricted to inmates of the same “race,” pointing to a conceptualization of gangs in prisons as a racialized phenomenon as far as the Singapore context is concerned.