ABSTRACT
The argument that the rise in crime in the late 1960s was simply a ‘blip’, and that crime would fall again to pre-disorder levels, initially seemed to be borne out. Though efforts had been made in the 1960s to reduce the vast number of hawking and other miscellaneous offences, courts in the 1970s were complaining that the biggest portion of their caseload, especially in the magistrates’ court, was taken up with such matters. Crime in the post-riot years actually showed a slight falling off. During and after the anti-crime campaign of 1973 and 1974, when the focus was on serious and violent crime, the prosecution of these miscellaneous offences dropped significantly. In 1971, the police noted a ‘worrying concern’ in the increasing numbers of juveniles and young people involved in crimes of violence. All forms of recorded crime apparently increased in Hong Kong during the 1970s. Young offenders were the newly identified ‘crime problem’, gangs of youths ‘given to violence’.
