ABSTRACT
This chapter examines crime trends in Hong Kong (HK) over the past 30 years and discusses factors that may have impacted on the prevalence and nature of crime. Frequently cited factors include age, economy, social malaise, abortion, guns, gangs, drug use, media, anticrime measures, and crime opportunities (Siegel and Senna 2007). Levels of crimes in HK are usually measured by official statistics and victim surveys but occasionally involve self-report youth delinquency surveys (Wong 1992; Vagg, Bacon-Shone, Gray, and Lam 1995). Official crime statistics underestimate crime because of under-reporting and recording practices. This so-called ‘dark figure’ is addressed by victim surveys that estimate the ‘true’ victimization rate, but are also subject to sampling and non-sampling errors. In this chapter, our discussion is limited to the role of age, reporting behaviour, economic change, and policy on crime trends. First we provide an overview of the crime situation in HK.
