Juvenile Crime and Responses To Delinquency in Hong Kong: Dennis S. W. Wong

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
Responses to Delinquency in Hong Kong
Juvenile Crime and Responses

to Delinquency in Hong Kong
Dennis S. W. Wong
Abstract: This article describes the juvenile crime trend and responses to juvenile delin-
quency in Hong Kong since the 1970s. It explores how changing conceptions of the causes of
juvenile crime have influenced delinquency control policies. Although Hong Kong has a rela-
tively low crime rate, the heavy emphasis on the use of custodial programs over commu-
nity-based programs is obvious. Whereas the scope of delinquency literature is narrow and the
legal professional’s opinion is rather conservative, new initiatives to further advance the juve-
nile justice system are difficult.
Before China took back the sovereignty, Hong Kong was a British colony between
1842 and 1997. At first only a small fishing port, even before World War II,1 the
overall crime rate was very low and the government paid little attention to the
problem of delinquency. The evolution of Hong Kong’s economy2 has brought
massive changes in the quality of living since the 1970s. Similar to any city in the
developing world, Hong Kong has experienced a number of social problems such
as poverty, housing, and a poor environment, arising from rapid urbanization and
industrialization.
JUVENILE CRIME TREND IN HONG KONG
According to the official statistics, the rate of juvenile delinquency3 was 212
per 100,000 aged 7 to 15 in 1976. This rate increased rapidly and by 1989, it has
risen more than four times to 962. The rate started to decline in the 1990s, falling
to 800 by 1997. Juvenile delinquency also increased as a proportion of total crime
from 8.2% in 1976 to 17% in 1989, again falling to 14.3% in 1997. Youth delin-
quency for those aged 16 to 20 has also been rising since the early 1970s, but the
momentum has not been as great as that of juvenile delinquency. Official statistics
show that youth crime rates have risen from 973 per 100,000 in 1976 to a peak of
2,203 in 1994. It stood at 1,579 in 1997 when the proportion of youth to total crime
was around 16.4% (Census and Statistic Department, 1998; Vagg, Bacon-Shone,
Gray, & Lam, 1995). The majority of delinquents (aged younger than 21) are
male, constituting 91% of the youth offender population in 1990. The percentage
dropped to 85% in 1998, whereas the sex ratio kept relatively constant. This
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 44(3), 2000 279-292
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280 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
reflects that more female delinquent behaviors were reported and charged by the
police (Hong Kong Police, 1999).
From the available statistics, it seems that the juvenile delinquency rate in
Hong Kong is much higher than that in mainland China (about 200 per 100,000
juveniles aged 14 to 18 in 1990) but clearly lower than that in Japan (about 1,400
per 100,000 juveniles aged 14 to 18, 1996) and even further lower than the rate in
the United States (about 2,500 per 100,000 juveniles aged 17 or younger in 1990).
It is also found that juveniles account for a similar proportion of total crime in
Hong Kong, China, and the United States (around 15% to 18% over the last
decade of published statistics), but juvenile delinquency accounts for a much
larger share of total crime in Japan (around 45%) (China Law Yearbook Editorial
Committee, 1997; Lundman, 1993; National Police Agency, 1997).
HOW SERIOUS IS JUVENILE CRIME?
It is well-known that official crime statistics can never be free of the biases
inherent in their production. When one interprets the statistics of juvenile crime,
one important point has to be noted. The juvenile crime rates as well as the propor-
tion of juvenile crime to total crime only reflect the number of juveniles arrested
by the police. In 1997, out of 5,964 juveniles arrested in Hong Kong, only 42%
(2,514) were prosecuted (Hong Kong Police, 1999). In Hong Kong, a substantial
proportion of juvenile delinquents is not prosecuted if crimes are minor (e.g., pil-
fering) and if both the victims’ and the offenders’ parents do not raise any objec-
tion. Instead, the juvenile offenders are dealt under the police-cautioning scheme
(formally called Police Superintendent’s Discretionary Scheme or PSDS).
According to statistics collected from the Hong Kong Police, there were only
391 juveniles cautioned by the police in 1976, but surprisingly, the number had
increased by nearly seven times to 2,767 by 1997. Compared with an about 1.6
times increase in juveniles prosecuted between the years of 1976 and 1997, the
magnitude of the increase in number of juveniles cautioned is much greater (Hong
Kong Police, 1999; Vagg et al., 1995). Bearing in mind that the minimum age of
criminal responsibility in Hong Kong is relatively low (age 7) as compared to
other developed countries, most of the juveniles arrested were quite young. Inter-
estingly enough, if the number of juveniles cautioned were deducted from the
total number of arrested juveniles, the proportion of juvenile crimes (not counting
the cautioned figures) to total crimes would become 6.6% in 1976, 6.3 % in 1987,
and 7.7% in 1997. Figure 1 shows that the proportion of crimes committed by
juveniles and the rate of increase are both much less when the numbers cautioned
are omitted. In that case, the picture of a rising wave of juvenile delinquency
becomes less alarming. Given that most of the offences committed by juveniles
placed on PSDS were petty and minor in nature, it is possible that increased con-
cern over juveniles’ unruly behavior rather than offences has led to a widening of
the juvenile justice net (Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups [HKFYG],
Responses to Delinquency in Hong Kong 281
Figure 1 Proportion of Juvenile Crime to Total Crime, 1976 to 1997

SOURCE: Figures of the proportion of juvenile crime (based on number of persons arrested) for 1976
to 1987 were obtained from Hong Kong Police (personal communication, November 22, 1994). Fig-
ures from 1988 to 1997 were obtained from Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics (Census and Statis-
tics Department, 1996, 1997, 1998).
NOTE: PSDS = Police Superintendent’s Discretionary Scheme.
1993). Gray (1991) analyzed issues related to the massive rise in the rates of juve-
nile cautioning between 1978 and 1987. After investigating the seriousness of
cases appearing before the courts in the same period, she found that many juve-
niles continued to appear in court for quite minor offences with no previous cau-
tion. She concluded, “the large increase in cautioning may therefore indeed be
attributable to bringing more juveniles into the system rather than diversion of
less serious offences from the court” (p. 29). To a certain extent, the upsurge in the
juvenile crime rates might be due to the net-widening effect caused by the PSDS,
especially between 1982 and 1988 (Figure 1).
The proportion of violent crimes committed by juveniles to total crimes was
not significant. For example, there were 1,668 juveniles involved in violent crime,
which accounted for only 3.7% of the total crimes in 1993. In 1997, the percentage
was 3.5%. The proportion of violent crimes committed by juveniles to total vio-
lent crimes also was not high. Over the past few decades, serious juvenile violent
cases such as rape, murder, and manslaughter were extremely rare. There were
only 16 cases found in 1997, which accounted for 0.17 % of all violent crimes
(Census and Statistics Department, 1998). Juveniles were only responsible for
about 14% of all serious violent crimes such as murder and manslaughter, rape,
robbery with firearms and with pistol-like objects, wounding, indecent assault,
and serious assault in 1994 (Census and Statistics Department, 1995). In the
United States, juveniles were responsible for about 20% of all the 1994 arrests for
serious violent offences—murder, rape and other sexual assault, robbery, and
aggravated assault (Craig & Stafford, 1997).
As for nonviolent crimes, the most typical offences were property related such
as shop theft, burglary, theft from vehicle, and other thefts. Property-related
offences altogether accounted for 74% of the total nonviolent crimes committed
by juveniles in 1993 and 77% in 1997. Some other commonly found juvenile
offences were criminal damage, unlawful society offences (such as membership
in a triad society), and sex offences other than rape and indecent assault. These
three types of offences accounted for 9.6% of total nonviolent crimes committed
by juveniles in 1993 and 10.5% in 1997 (Census and Statistics Department, 1994,
1998). Drug-related offences committed by juveniles such as manufacturing or
trafficking or possession of dangerous drugs were few. They only accounted for
1.6% in 1993 and 0.6% in 1997. Although not many juveniles were caught for
drug-related offences, newly self-reported drug abuse cases among young people
younger than 21 years of age doubled between 1988 and 1992 (Lai, 1997).
EXPLANATION OF DELINQUENCY
Sociologists considered that economic condition and population size and den-
sity, which increased rapidly in Hong Kong between the mid-1950s and the
mid-1970s, contributed to the dramatic increase of crime rates (Gaylord & Lang,
1997; Traver, 1991). This view is in line with the modernization theory of crime
(Shelley, 1981), which conceives that urbanization and industrialization inevita-
bly increase the criminal opportunities and the potential for nonconformity and
simultaneously lead to a decline in traditional social controls. Nevertheless,
empirical support for modernization theory is mixed and difficult to interpret.
Gaylord and Lang (1997) warned that “if modernization theory describes crime
trends in East Asia’s New Industrial Countries as simply a replay of the historical
experience of Western industrial nations, then it clearly sacrifices complexity in
favor of generalization” (p. 56).
There had been no solid empirical study of the causes of crime in Hong Kong
until the government commissioned the Chinese University of Hong Kong to
undertake the first citywide survey on delinquency in 1973. The results of this sur-
vey showed the offenders were more likely to come from a relatively poor back-
ground as well as from broken homes, to have negative attitudes toward parental
control, and that the parents of the offenders appeared to provide relatively less
supervision for the offenders. A much higher rate of school dropout was also
found among offenders than nonoffenders. Offenders tended to have intimate
friends with much lower educational levels as compared with those of the
nonoffenders.
The rise of juvenile crime rates again attracted public attention in the late
1970s. In September 1980, the governor of Hong Kong asked the Fight Crime
Committee to undertake a thorough study of both the statistics and the upsurge of
juvenile crime in the late 1970s (Hong Kong Government, 1981). The results of
this research showed that a substantial number of the offenders were poor, came
from broken or big families, did not have motivation to study, associated with triad
gang members, and so on. Nevertheless, there were quite a substantial number of
offenders who did have good-conduct friends, claimed to maintain a good rela-
tionship with parents, and participated in activities in community centers. The
results concluded that although there had been a serious weakening of family ties
and family relationships in those years, no direct link between family conditions
and delinquency was found.
From the 1970s to 1980s, delinquency was portrayed as moral degeneration
brought about by inadequate socialization and inappropriate parental supervision.
The etiological assumption of delinquency seems to be purely functionalist. The
findings of the studies described earlier were used to justify the increasing use of
custodial treatments (including probation homes or reformatory schools) for
delinquents in Hong Kong at that time. During that period, the concept of proba-
tionary rehabilitation through residential treatment became a major theme. Gray
(1991, 1996) described this way of thinking as “disciplinary welfare.” She further
elaborated that “while it is welfare oriented, aiming to help young people to sort
out their problems at home, at school and with friends, it also involves greater ‘po-
licing’ of their behavior and lifestyle, to compensate for lack of parental supervi-
sion” (Gray, 1996, p. 27). After all, it would appear that the ideology behind the
juvenile justice system, including the attitudes and beliefs of criminal justice pro-
fessionals toward the causes and treatment of juvenile crime, might be a major
obstacle to the development of community-based programs in Hong Kong.
FEW CRIMINOLOGICAL DEBATES
There is no denying that criminological debates among criminologists or

social work professionals are rare in Hong Kong. As of this writing, there is no
bachelor degree program on criminology in any of the eight universities. Only one
university offers a part-time master’s degree program in criminology, which
recruits students once every 2 years in Hong Kong. No textbook published by
local academics on topics such as criminology can be found in Hong Kong. It is
generally known that there are few criminologists who possess a doctoral degree
in criminology or a related field. Komala, Tang, and Cheung (1989) compiled a
bibliography of criminological literature in Hong Kong. The report lists all the
local publications on crime and criminal justice. Out of 75 articles, research
reports, and dissertations categorized under juvenile delinquency published
before January 1989, more than half of them are local survey reports. About 15 are
articles published in local professional journals or books; none of them consist of

rigorous academic debates of criminological theories.
Until the article published by Cheung and Ng (1988), there was no academic
research that adopted labeling theory to explain delinquency in Hong Kong. In
their study, labeling theory is, however, only considered as one of the possible
causal factors among other theories such as differential association, control, and
strain theories. In 1993, the Hong Kong Central Fight Crime Committee launched
a second citywide study of the social causes of juvenile crime. The research was a
representative one because the researchers drew on a sample of more than 2,000
ordinary adolescents and nearly 400 young offenders for hypothesis testing (Vagg
et al., 1995). The empirical findings suggested that the main factors associated
with delinquency were
• less frequent contact with parents and more extensive contact with friends in the con-
text of a marginal subculture;
• perceptions of being treated negatively by school (for both sexes), antischool atti-
tudes (for females), and negative relationships with classmates (for males); and
• those with higher rates of delinquency appeared to be more firmly entrenched in the
marginal youth subculture and in street gangs.
The study found that three quarters of all males and about 40% of all females
had committed one or two delinquent acts during their adolescence. Thus, regard-
ing the phenomenon of first offending, Vagg et al. (1995) asserted that causes are
likely to be purely circumstantial. They further argued that because offending at
that level was so widespread, delinquency would be seen as a “taste offending”—
a part of children’s growing up.
RESPONSES TO DELINQUENCY
Earlier, it was outlined that the dramatic increase of juvenile crime rates is
linked to the use of police cautioning in the 1980s. Throughout much of its history,
the police have played a significant role to ensure the stability and prosperity of
Hong Kong. Scholars observe that the Hong Kong police have been provided with
extensive powers for the control of crime and maintenance of order (Gaylord &
Traver, 1995; Mushkat, 1988). For instance, in response to the problem that a sub-
stantial proportion of school students had been persuaded into joining gang triad
societies in the 1980s, each police divisional unit had a school liaison officer to
assist the schoolteachers to deal with criminal-related conflicts that occur in
schools. Under normal circumstances, the school liaison officer is only responsi-
ble for community education programs with joint school-police efforts. In some
occasions, however, when triad influences are particularly active, the police, with
the consent of the school principal, have launched an undercover police operation
to crack down on the triad gangs.
The senior management of the police force recently revealed that they had sent
some young police constables to infiltrate both a secondary school and a triad
society to collect triad-related criminal evidence. Reports suggested that more
than a hundred triad members were arrested through two undercover operations
lasting nearly 2 years. The police generally believe that undercover police officers
have turned out to be one of the most effective ways of breaking up the triads,
which account for up to 10% of crime in Hong Kong (“The Most Effective,” 1999;
“Undercover Police,” 1999).
There is no doubt that suppression tactics have been considered as appropriate
means for combating delinquency and gang problems over the past few decades.
Beginning in 1979, other than the use of suppression tactics by the police force,
services and treatments provided for potential delinquents or youth offenders can
be grouped into two major areas: preventive welfare strategy and statutory crimi-
nal justice strategy.
PREVENTIVE WELFARE STRATEGY
In the late 1970s, the government started to sponsor a number of non-

governmental organizations to run personal social services for young people, such
as school social work, outreaching social work, and family life education, to
reduce or prevent antisocial or delinquent behavior in young people. From 1980
onward, the following four major kinds of youth welfare services have formed the
basis for this preventive welfare model of crime control: children and youth center
(CY), outreaching social work (OR), school social work (SSW), and family life
education (FLE).
CY centers are neighborhood centers from where all children and youth aged
between 6 and 24 can obtain recreational and guidance services that they need.
These centers provide structured group work services and organize interest
classes for children and youth living in the same neighborhood. OR social work-
ers reach out to and establish contact with young people who are vulnerable to
undesirable influence. Juvenile gangs are normally the primary targets of the OR
team. By the end of 1998, there were around 230 various types of CY centers
established in different housing estates or residential areas to assist teenagers with
their personal development. For the OR teams, at present there are 32 teams with a
total of about 220 professional OR workers. These teams only serve areas where
youth crime rates are high. SSW helps pupils whose academic, social, and emo-
tional developments are at risk. This service is limited to secondary school stu-
dents in the territory. The approved manning ratio for poor schools was one SSW
worker for around 1,000 secondary students in 1998. But for the good schools, the
manning ratio was 1 to 2,000. About 300 social workers are now providing ser-
vices to all secondary schools in the territory. Family life education is provided in
the form of community education. It is preventive and developmental in nature.
There are roughly 79 FLE workers providing a wide range of educational and pro-
motional programs in 13 administrative districts of the territory.
Despite the fact that a variety of services for young people has been developed,
these preventive welfare services are criticized as compartmentalized and frag-
mented. It is recognized that young people have to take on multiple roles deriving
from very different and often quite conflicting statuses as they are growing up.
The different youth services have been poorly integrated to respond to young peo-
ple’s needs, and services have become increasingly fragmented. In the report on
the review of CY center services (Lo, Wong, Ma, & Chan, 1997), the working
team recommended that a holistic approach to CY services should be adopted to
meet young people’s multifarious need, that resources currently dispersed in dif-
ferent services for young people should be pooled together to set up integrated
teams (ITs), and that staff in the ITs should be deployed flexibly to meet the partic-
ular needs and problems of young people and to provide services in different set-
tings such as schools, street corners, or children and youth centers.
In response to this proposal, altogether 10 ITs were formed between October
1994 and January 1995 under a government subvention. Nearly all ITs pooled
staff resources from both OR teams and CY centers already in operation. In addi-
tion, some ITs pooled resources from SSW and FLE in the service areas that the
former OR team and CY center were supposed to serve. By the end of 1998, more
than 28 ITs formed by integrating the existing youth services. Each IT consists of
at least 10 social work professionals and about five non-social-work staff.
This new move in restructuring children and youth services is in line with Vagg
et al.’s (1995) research results that found most young people experiment with
problem behavior and crime to a small degree and grow out of it without social
work intervention. Because we cannot predict from young people’s behavior or
social circumstances who will or will not become delinquent, the holistic and
person-centered approaches adopted by the IT workers should be much more
appropriate.
STATUTORY CRIMINAL JUSTICE STRATEGY
Similar to the British rehabilitation and correctional services, statutory mea-

sures such as detention centers, training centers, reformatory schools, and proba-
tion homes have been established to deal with young convicted offenders. Those
who are found guilty of less serious offences but who are not suitable for a custo-
dial sentence are put under community supervision by a probation order or com-
munity service order. There are also opportunities for young offenders who have
committed minor offences to be dealt with by police cautioning. With the excep-
tion of the police caution service, the Social Welfare Department (SWD) or the
Correctional Services Department (CSD) runs all other services.
The main objective of SWD services for juvenile offenders is to help them
become law-abiding citizens and reintegrate them into the community. This is
achieved through both community-based and residential services adopting social

work approaches. At present, there are 13 probation offices and three teams of the
CSD consisting of more than 100 social workers, serving magistrates, district
courts, and the Supreme Court. The SWD also runs residential institutes for juve-
nile offenders to help them change their behavior and social attitude through the
employment of social work methods. Apart from detention, programs such as
academic, prevocational, and character training are provided. There are currently
four different types of homes providing the rehabilitation services for young
offenders: reformatory schools (RS), probation homes (PH), probation hostels
(PhL), and remand homes (RH).
According to law, the period of residential training in RS cannot exceed 36
months, and in practice it normally ranges from 12 to 18 months. The average
length of detention of PH is 6 months, depending on the residents’ responses to
training. In contrast to these two residential training programs, PhL is an open
institution that aims to help probationers develop self-control and regain self-
respect and independence. Offenders are allowed to work or study outside the
hotel in daytime but they have to come back before dinnertime. Aftercare service
is provided to all young offenders who have been discharged from residential
training. The services provided include counseling, home visits, and assistance in
their accommodation, job, and school placement. For the RH, it serves two pur-
poses. First, juvenile offenders between 7 and 15 years old who are not willing to
be placed on a probation order may be requested to reside in a place of detention,
normally a RH. Second, juveniles who are awaiting a court hearing would be
placed on an RH.
Under the detention centers (DC), training centers (TC), youth prisons (YP),
and drug addiction treatment centers ordinances (DATC), the CSD operates seven
institutions providing different rehabilitation programs for young offenders aged
between 14 and 25. After release, aftercare services are provided to young
inmates discharged from DC, TC, and DATC. Their statutory period of supervi-
sion is either 1 year or 3 years depending on the program they attended.
Similar to the British detention center, the DC program in Hong Kong provides
young offenders with “short, sharp, shock” treatment emphasizing strict disci-
pline, hard work, physical training, and foot drill, whereas the regime of TC
focuses on the training and reformatory value of detention with an emphasis on
productive activities and character training for the inmates, aiming at facilitating
the reintegration of inmates into the community as law-abiding citizens. A person
younger than 21 years of age shall be sentenced to imprisonment only if there are
no other appropriate alternatives. YP operates a routine and program with strong
emphasis on the term of imprisonment. Thus, youth prisoners must be separated
from adult prisoners. Half-day education classes and half-day vocational training
are available to prisoners, subject to good conduct and industry.
DATC is a compulsory drug treatment center run by the CSD for offenders who
are drug-dependent persons notwithstanding the crimes they committed. The pro-
gram plays a significant role in providing residential treatment that lasts from 2 to
12 months for convicted drug addicts. In 1995 to 1996, the average length of stay
was about 5½ months (Lo, in press).
There is no denying that when we compared the custodial conditions with the
former British colonies in West Africa where prisoners were poorly fed and given
insufficient medical care in poorly staffed prisons, the standards of Hong Kong’s
correctional institutions have been more advanced and developed (Lo, in press).
Overall, a senior superintendent of CSD pointed out, both the existing legislation
as well as the legal spirit in Hong Kong favors the use of imprisonment as only the
last resort in dealing with young lawbreakers (Chan, 1997). However, this view
has not won general acceptance among critics despite the clear improvements in
recent decades. It is believed that custodial programs have a negative effect, such
as institutionalization and contamination effects, on offenders (Gray, 1996;
Wong, 1999).
RESPONSES TO DELINQUENCY: THE WAY AHEAD
This article is intended to provide readers with an overview of juvenile crime,

explanation for delinquency, and delinquency control policies in Hong Kong.
Viewed from a comparative perspective as measured by the juvenile crime rate
and its proportion of total crimes, the problem of delinquency in Hong Kong is not
as serious as that in developed countries. However, it is obvious that social work
and criminal justice professionals do play an important role in working with
young people or delinquents through preventive welfare and statutory criminal
justice strategies. It is argued that the greater the number of adults who are keeping
their eyes and ears open for inappropriate behaviors of teenagers, the more these
adults pick up powerless unskilled youngsters (Cohen, 1985).
Furthermore, the heavy use of custodial measures as opposed to care in
noncustodial programs seems to speed up the juvenile offenders’ criminal career.
Apart from probation and community service orders, no other community-based
sentencing options are available for juvenile offenders in Hong Kong. In studying
the decision-making practices of juvenile justice professionals, Gray (1994)
found that the majority of juveniles receiving custodial sentences had an
extremely short offending career. From her research data, 66.7% of those young
offenders placed in a DC had a clear criminal record, and 70% of those sent to a
TC had either a clear record or only one previous conviction. Her finding is in line
with Vagg et al.’s (1995) finding that overreaction might intensify the delinquent
problem and accidentally promote further delinquency. The key question then is
Are there any other effective ways that can help juvenile offenders to stop their
criminal career?
Recent recommendations in two studies on delinquency in Hong Kong (Gray,
1994; Vagg et al., 1995) have been that community-based treatment should be
expanded to provide fair punishment for those who are found guilty. These schol-
ars argue that youngsters who have experienced a period of compulsory detention
appear to have acquired more deviant values and behavior on release than they had
before their arrest. In particular, Gray (1994) recommended that more commu-
nity-based sentencing options should be introduced for the magistrates to con-
sider. A full range of noncustodial options, such as intermediate community treat-
ment programs, should be tried before resorting to residential care or custody.
Regarding the suggestion to expand police cautioning scheme, Gray (1994) and
Vagg et al. (1995) shared the same view that stringent monitoring measures
to safeguard against net widening should be introduced alongside with the
expansion.
The recommendations to expand the police cautioning scheme and commu-
nity-based treatment in Hong Kong are indeed logical suggestions for a Hong
Kong society in which disciplinary welfare ideology has been dominant for many
years. Their suggestions may be appropriate ways to divert juvenile offenders
from a more sophisticated criminal justice system and can protect juveniles from
further stigmatization; however, their suggestions do not go far from the retribu-
tive justice paradigm. Under the earlier suggestions, the individual victim or
offender is still treated as a passive object. The suggestions reflect an ideology
consistent with the paradigm that the state is the primary victim and that the focus
of attention is on the offender who has violated the interests of the state. Victims
are peripheral to the process of responding to and resolving the criminal incident
(Pranis, 1996; Umbreit, 1995). The suggestions also disregard the common criti-
cism of the use of community-based treatment that it cannot encourage young-
sters to hold themselves accountable for their wrongdoing to victims and may cre-
ate more irrational fears in the community.
In contrast to the retributive paradigm, the restorative justice paradigm views
crime as a violation of one person by another, not a violation of state interests.
Pranis (1996) pointed out that under the restorative paradigm, offenders are
accountable for their individual choices and communities are accountable for
supporting victims, making it possible for offenders to make reparation and for
addressing the conditions that contribute to crime. And, Braithwaite (1997) also
stressed that the spirit of the New Zealand juvenile justice reforms, for example, is
to get offenders and their communities, particularly their families, to take respon-
sibility for offending. The emphasis on reintegrative shaming, forgiveness, and
family responsibility for crime control through the Family Group Conference
(Maxwell & Morris, 1994) seems to be a possible solution for delinquency in Chi-
nese societies that value shame culturally (Zhang, 1995). In an in-depth study of
33 juveniles, Wong (1999) found the protective factors that are crucial for pulling
or pushing the Chinese youngsters to or from committing law-breaking acts or
further engaging in criminal activities are positive shaming practices, forgiveness,
brotherhood, and the logic of interdependency. The restorative justice approach
seems to be compatible with a Chinese culture that emphasizes collective values
and the restoration of harmony.
Apart from making necessary improvements to the preventive welfare and stat-
utory criminal justice services, an ideal way would be to reform the present juve-
nile justice system. This can be done by reforming the Juvenile Offender Ordi-
nance and establishing a mechanism such as the Family Group Conference that
would supplement the police cautioning scheme and the juvenile court as the deci-
sion-making forum in most juvenile criminal cases. In recent years, I have been
advocating changes in this direction in the juvenile justice system of Hong Kong.
However, influenced by their concern about the spread of ambiguous criminal
practices in communist China just after the handover of Hong Kong, the legal jus-
tice professionals tend to have a negative view of the informal model of social
control such as the use of a victim-offender mediation program. For instance, the
presumption of innocence is a concept missing from the Chinese judicial system
(Davidson & Wang, 1996). The concern of legal professionals in Hong Kong is
that restorative justice may render the criminal justice system ineffective, nourish
abuse of power, encourage false restoration, or even create greater injustice. They
also worry about whether real justice can be achieved outside the court system
(HKFYG, 1998). In brief, there is an emerging view that any reform of the juve-
nile justice system should be gradual.
To conclude, the advantage of restorative justice rests on its very nature in its
contrast with the retributive justice system. In restorative justice, juvenile offend-
ers are being reintegrated into the society through repentance and reparation. Vic-
tims are also given opportunities to forgive offenders for their wrongdoing.
Besides, restorative programs are diversions so that the juvenile offender does not
enter into the criminal justice system altogether. It should be argued that such a
new direction for change is culturally relevant too. The opportunity to make
improvements to juvenile justice is at hand because the very idea of restorative
justice fits the Chinese cultural heritage that emphasizes interpersonal harmony,
positive shaming practice, and forgiveness.
NOTES
1. The population in Hong Kong was about 600,000 just after World War II. It had soared above 2
million by the early 1950s after the communists dominated the Chinese Mainland. Now the total popu-
lation is about 6.5 million. The percentage of youth population aged younger than 20 accounted for
24.8% in 1997 (Census and Statistics Department, 1998).
2. Since 1975, Hong Kong’s economy has more than quadrupled in size. Hong Kong has been one
of the world’s top 10 largest trading entities in the 10 years and is also the world’s fifth-largest banking
center and foreign exchange market (Gaylord, 1997; Gaylord & Lang, 1997). Real per capita gross
domestic product has grown from HK$23,723 in 1978 to HK$116,166 in 1991 (Census and Statistics
Department, 1988, 1995). It was second to Japan in Asia in 1996 (Gaylord, 1997).
3. In this article, juvenile delinquency denotes crimes committed by teenagers aged between 7 and
15, and youth delinquency denotes crimes committed by young persons aged 16 to 20 in Hong Kong.
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Dennis S. W. Wong, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of Applied Social Studies
City University of Hong Kong
Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon, Hong Kong

Juvenile Crime and Responses To Delinquency in Hong Kong: Dennis S. W. Wong

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International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

Responses to Delinquency in Hong Kong

Juvenile Crime and Responses

JUVENILE CRIME TREND IN HONG KONG

HOW SERIOUS IS JUVENILE CRIME?

Figure 1 Proportion of Juvenile Crime to Total Crime, 1976 to 1997

FEW CRIMINOLOGICAL DEBATES

There is no denying that criminological debates among criminologists or

articles published in local professional journals or books; none of them consist of

PREVENTIVE WELFARE STRATEGY

In the late 1970s, the government started to sponsor a number of non-

STATUTORY CRIMINAL JUSTICE STRATEGY

Similar to the British rehabilitation and correctional services, statutory mea-

achieved through both community-based and residential services adopting social

RESPONSES TO DELINQUENCY: THE WAY AHEAD

This article is intended to provide readers with an overview of juvenile crime,

Dennis S. W. Wong, Ph.D.

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