"Rough Justice" by Alejandro Reyes

Since March 31, Queenstown has housed Michael Peter Fay, an American teenager who has arguably become Singapore's most famous--or notorious--prison inmate.

After pleading guilty to vandalism charges, the 18-year-old student was sentenced March 3 to four months in jail, a $2,200 fine--and six strokes of the cane.

President Bill Clinton asked the Singapore government to waive the caning, which he called "excessive."

After losing an appeal against his sentence, Fay asked Singapore's President Ong Teng Cheong for clemency.

The cases of Fay and eight other expatriate teenagers arrested for vandalism stirred up an international row and roused a fierce debate about crime and punishment.

Rightly or wrongly, the affair was transformed from a seemingly simple case of a troubled teen into a philosophical argument about values and cultural clashes.

And it put the spotlight on the judicial systems in the U.S., where Americans bemoan rising crime and the ineffectiveness of their penal system, and Singapore, where leaders say strict laws and harsh punishments have meant clean streets and peaceful neighborhoods.

Kirchhoff left the country with his family, forfeiting his $1,280 bail.

Fay's mother, Randy Chan, recalls the day her son was arrested: "I returned home that day finding out that they had been in our apartment and had totally ransacked Michael's room."

Mrs. Chan wasn't able to see her son until the second day of his detention.

Fay's family would later say that Michael was beaten and coerced into confessing to a long list of offenses.

There were claims too that one of the Malaysian boys suffered a ruptured eardrum.

The Malaysian was eventually sentenced in juvenile court to two months in a boys' home.

Enacted a year after the republic left the Malaysian Federation, the law explicitly mandates between three and eight strokes of the cane for each count, though a provision allows first offenders to escape caning "if the writing, drawing, mark or inscription is done with pencil, crayon, chalk or other delible substances and not with paint, tar or other indelible substances."

Palakrishnan argued that the fact the paint was easily and cheaply removed should have saved his client from the mandatory thrashing.

Shiu and his lawyers chose not to plea bargain but to plead not guilty, arguing that the Hong Kong boy's confession was forced out of him and that he had alibis for the nights in question.

The night is for partying at trendy clubs such as Zouk, a popular warehouse-turned-disco.

George, who was 13 when his family emigrated, worked as a delivery boy in his parents' dry-cleaning shop in New York.

Meanwhile, outside the Subordinate Courts, the first salvo in what was to become a diplomatic row was launched.

We see a large discrepancy between the offense and the punishment.

Unlike some other societies which may tolerate acts of vandalism, Singapore has its own standards of social order as reflected in our laws.

"We simply do not understand how the government can condone the permanent scarring of any 18-year-old boy--American or Singaporean--by caning for such an offense."

"The U.S. government, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. media took the opportunity to ridicule us, saying the sentence was too severe," he said in a television interview.

Canada, whose legal system and philosophy more closely resemble the British and American models, enjoys low crime rates in stark contrast to its neighbor to the south.

And despite the strict laws and harsh penalties, Singapore has seen a rise in juvenile delinquency, drug abuse and white-collar crime.

If there is a single fundamental difference between the Western and Asian world view, it is the dichotomy between individual freedom and collective welfare

The Western cliché that it would be better for a guilty person to go free than to convict an innocent person is testimony to the importance of the individual.

We would rather convict even if it doesn't accord with the purist's traditions of the presumption of innocence.

Acquittals can be appealed and are sometimes overturned.

America's legal system, he argues, "has gone completely berserk. They're so mesmerized by the rights of the individual that they forget that other people have rights too.

The predominantly Chinese city-state also has a cohesive value system that emphasizes such Confucian virtues as respect for authority

He and his family will return to the U.S., where he will no doubt make the talk show rounds and reap the monetary benefits of America's fascination with the criminal.

Freehill was alleged to have been one of the accomplices of Fay and Shiu in last year's vandalism spree.

Within the United States, there will be conservative groups who share with us the same beliefs in hard work, thrift, personal responsibility and the value of the family. It's the old Protestant work ethic.