Lembaga Pencegahan Jenayah

On the court record

Sits at the constitutional core of preventive detention, testing the mandatory procedural safeguards and how far section 15B's ouster clause insulates detention decisions from judicial review.

Lembaga Pencegahan Jenayah (the Prevention of Crime Board) appears in the reported judgments as the statutory body responsible for preventive-detention decisions under the Prevention of Crime Act 1959, named as a respondent in habeas corpus proceedings before the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan). Its presence marks decisions at the constitutional core of individual liberty and preventive detention.

The matters engage the tension between national security and individual liberty under the Federal Constitution. In one decision the court considered an application for habeas corpus challenging preventive detention under the Prevention of Crime Act 1959, engaging Article 5(2) of the Federal Constitution and a series of provisions of the Act — including sections 4(2), 4A, 10(2), 15B, 19A and 365 — together with the constitutional framework in Articles 149, 5, 9, 10 and 13, and the Prevention of Crime (Advisory Board Procedure) Regulations 2014. The reasoning canvassed the rule of law, individual liberty and the effect of delay on the validity of a detention, referring to and distinguishing a line of authorities on preventive detention.

Further decisions engaged the board in review applications and the effect of an ouster clause. One concerned a review under rule 137 of the Rules of the Federal Court on the ground of a breach of natural justice, and another addressed the ouster clause in section 15B of the Prevention of Crime Act 1959 — a provision that purports to exclude judicial review of preventive-detention decisions except on procedural grounds. Across the decisions, the board illustrates the constitutional limits of preventive detention: the courts scrutinise compliance with the mandatory procedural safeguards that condition a valid detention order, while an ouster clause seeks to confine that scrutiny, and the balance between the two lies at the heart of the reported reasoning. The decisions are among the more consequential in the field of personal liberty, testing how far the executive's preventive-detention powers may be insulated from judicial review.