ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the problems of crime and drugs have been dealt with in Hong Kong before and after 1997. Hong Kong was a British colony in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Island part of Hong Kong was ceded to the British in 1842 after the First Opium War. In 1898, New Kowloon and the New Territories were leased to the British for 100 years after the Second Opium War. The sovereignty of the whole of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. On the whole, the crime rate in Hong Kong has remained stable and at a low level from 1997 to 2011. From 1997 to 2010, about one-quarter of the homicides in Hong Kong were cases of family violence involving 183 victims who were female and children. According to statistics collected by the Social Welfare Department, the rate of child abuse also has more than doubled from 2000 to 2011.
