“Doing Their Jobs”: Legal Regulation of Policing and Suicide Risk of Justice-Involved Persons in Singapore

Using the island nation-state of Singapore as a case study, this article conceptualizes the legal regulation of policing as a risk factor for suicide among justice-involved persons. Through the lens of legal epidemiology, it discusses public health research and criminal procedure jurisprudence to theorize the unintended consequences of the police “doing their job” in accordance with a legal framework that prioritizes crime control and order maintenance. It examines how two aspects of policing—the power of arrest and the interrogation process—may influence the mental health and suicide risk of justice-involved persons. This article thus calls attention to the role of law in shaping policing practices and their effects and lends support to calls for stronger due process protections from a public health perspective.