ABSTRACT
The story of crime and criminal justice in Hong Kong draws on the official record, the internal correspondence of colonial officials, as well as other articles, documents and sources. The official documents and archives of colonialism are places where historians can examine the ways in which European communities ‘produced themselves through ideas of colonialism and colonial ideologies including race, class and gender’. In Hong Kong’s case, orthodox versions of its history present this as a story of a society marked by low crime, ever-increasing integration, orderliness and stability. The stories Hong Kong criminologists tell of crime and criminal justice have, therefore, proved a rather weak corrective to those told by the state itself. The dominant discourse of Hong Kong represents it as an economic city of politically apathetic seekers after wealth. Citizens’ beliefs about public safety are crucial to social stability, and are closely related to their perceptions of government performance.
