Amos Yee to remain in US jail another six months, faces possible lifetime monitoring

Convicted sex offender and former Singaporean blogger Amos Yee will remain behind bars in the United States for at least another six months, following a ruling by Illinois state authorities. The 26-year-old, who was initially scheduled for parole in April, now faces a projected release date of November 7, 2025.

A search on the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) website shows that Yee’s new parole date falls exactly two years after his re-incarceration in 2023. His projected discharge date, which marks the end of mandatory supervised release, has also been updated — it now ranges from three years to life, subject to further review.

Under Illinois law, an offender’s discharge date reflects when they are officially released from parole, also known as mandatory supervised release. “Amos Yee is not eligible to resume mandatory supervised release until Nov 7, 2025, due to the Prisoner Review Board determining he violated the terms of his release,” an IDOC spokesperson confirmed. The department did not elaborate on the nature of the violation.

Yee is currently serving his sentence at Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security prison for adult males located nearly three hours from Chicago. He had previously been housed at Illinois River Correctional Center, another medium-security facility.

The Singaporean made headlines nearly a decade ago as a teenage blogger known for his controversial posts. He fled to the US in December 2016, just before he was due to report for a medical check-up ahead of his national service enlistment. He was granted political asylum in 2017, claiming he had been persecuted in Singapore for his views.

But trouble followed him across the Pacific. In 2020, he was arrested for sexually exploiting a 14-year-old girl living in Texas. Investigators found that he had asked the teenager to send him nude photos, and in return, sent explicit images of himself. The two had exchanged thousands of messages on WhatsApp, many of them involving sexual fantasies. The girl had repeatedly made her age clear to him.

Yee pleaded guilty to grooming and possessing child pornography and was sentenced to six years in prison. He was initially held at Illinois River Correctional Center before being paroled in October 2023 — three years ahead of his full sentence. But just a month later, he was sent back to prison. The reasons remain unclear.

Since his conviction, Yee has been listed on the US sex offender registry, which makes his name, offence and home address publicly available.