I sure would pay higher taxes to support ever-growing prisons, since this is the alternative punishment for sex offenders:

Singapore – Three of four teenage footballers who took turns having sex with a 12-year-old girl in a Singapore toilet stall were placed on probation and ordered to carry out 140 hours of community service, news reports said on Saturday.

“Your conduct in this matter has been most shameful and wrong,” The Straits Times quoted District Judge Wong Choon Ning as saying.

A fourth youth, Syed Shafreen Syed Karim, 17, will be sentenced next Thursday.

His brothers, Syed Hashreen, 19; Muhammad Taufiq Mansor, 18; and Muhammad Noor Kamaruddin, 18, were each put on probation for 18 months.

Wong also ordered them to observe a curfew.

For the offence of having sex with an underage girl, Wong noted Chief Justice Yong Pung How had held that consenting to sex was not a mitigating factor.

Girls under 16 are deemed by law to be incapable of giving valid consent and unable to “fully comprehend and appreciate the serious repercussions of entering into a sexual relationship”, Wong said in her ruling on Friday.

The girl had flirted with the youths after they finished a football game on September 26 last year.

Later she had sex in a toilet stall with each of the four.

The girl, who reported the incident to police, was sent to a welfare home and has been under counselling. She is now 13.