S'pore may need legal framework for social nuisance: Shanmugam

Law Minister K. Shanmugam has floated an idea for some form of legal framework to deal with disputes between neighbours, as a “new way” of handling conduct that disturbed others.

In a Facebook posting on Friday, he said that tolerance of noisy neighbours and other behaviour is much lower now, but there is no “satisfactory legal solution” to dealing with such problems.

Most of the conduct is social nuisance rather than criminal, he noted, and police can take action only if it is criminal conduct. Also, going to the civil courts was “not really feasible either”.

“We need to consider new ways of dealing with conduct which is social nuisance,” he wrote. “We probably need a legal framework, which sets out what we should avoid doing when we live close to each other – because it unreasonably impacts on our neighbours - we need to develop new norms.”