Baseless Singapore 'floating prison' claims spread online

Published on August 11, 2025 at 08:49
3 min read
By Dene-Hern CHEN, AFP Australia

Singapore's prison agency has branded as "misinformation" claims online that the affluent Southeast Asian city-state has built a floating incarceration centre. The nonexistent structure was falsely depicted online using a picture of a controversial UK barge and an AI-generated image.

"Singapore has launched the world's first purpose-built floating prison -- a high-tech facility anchored 500 meters offshore that's redefining the future of incarceration," reads part of a Facebook post shared by a user in Fiji on July 17.

The post came with an image of a pink-and-grey barge on the water, which featured the text "World's first 'floating prison' just launched in Singapore" as well as the Southeast Asian country's flag.

A near-identical claim resurfaced on August 2 post from a Papua New Guinea user, which was shared more than 700 times. It featured an image of a boxy, red-and-grey vessel.

Screenshots of the two posts. The one on the left was taken on August 11, the one on the right was taken on August 8. The red Xs were added by AFP

Similar posts drew millions of views after being published by social media users across the world, spanning from India to the United States as well as Sierra Leone, Australia, Vanuatu, Ukraine and Scotland.

The Singapore Prison Service -- which takes care of the country's penitentiary systems -- put out a statement on July 17, calling the claim "misinformation" (archived link).

"This is untrue. Neither have we had any discussions or plans for such, nor is there a need," the agency said, urging the public not "to be taken in by such wild stories".

Misrepresented images

A reverse image search on Google found that the barge pictured was similar to a vessel known as the "Bibby Stockholm", which used to house male migrants in 2023 and 2024 off the southwest coast of England as the British government tried to clear a backlog of asylum requests (archived link).

The final remaining asylum seekers had left by last November, and the British government decided not to renew the contract to use the controversial accommodation barge (archived link).

The image circulated as the Singaporean prison barge appears to be an exact match to a picture taken by Ben Birchall, a photographer with British news agency Press Association, on July 18, 2023 (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of false post (left) and photo from PA Images

Another reverse search found the second image bears the "Made with Google AI" label.

The ability to detect AI-generated images is based on Google's SynthID technology, which was launched by its DeepMind AI lab in 2023 (archived here and here).

Screenshot taken on August 6 of the Google page indicating that the circulating image was made using AI

It indicated "Very High" confidence that it was made using Google AI as it detected SynthID watermarks in the majority of the image.

AFP has previously debunked misinformation about Singapore.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail