Towards smart prisons : evolution and challenges of leadership in the Hong Kong Correctional Services

Abstract

In 2018, as a part of the Chief Executive’s vision to build Hong Kong into a world-class smart city, the Hong Kong Correctional Services (HKCS) proposed to build a sustainable correctional system with an integrated operational protocol by developing the “smart prison” concept. Three years after the technology-based development projects had been pilot-tested in different correctional institutions across Hong Kong, the first-generation smart prison started operations in May 2021. This study examines the evolution and challenges of leadership in the HKCS before, during, and beyond 2018-2021. It adopts a case study approach with exploratory, historical, and descriptive components, complemented by an extensive array of interviews and participant observations. The interviews were with 54 participants from the HKCS, 12 from other government departments, and 12 from the Executive and Legislative Councils, non-government organisations, professional bodies, and the private sector. The focus is on concepts and demands of smart prisons and public leadership, wider concepts of leadership underpinning smart prisons, and considerable empirical evidence and experience, all of which provide valuable insights into past, contemporary and future correctional leadership developments. Even though the long colonial history has shaped the politics, administration, and operational outlook of the HKCS, the range of skills necessary for correctional leaders has been ever-expanding in the past two decades with arising organisational, socio-political, legal, and technological challenges. The exploration of the precursors to smart prisons recognises that the traditional command-and-control, hierarchical top-down approach to leadership enforcing strict rules and ascribed behaviours is still an essential part of operating the bureaucracy of a disciplinary force. At the same time, an examination of the drivers of smart prisons reckons that the seemingly static concept of correctional leadership has also been under a dynamic change to adapt to the evolving environments. Precursors and drivers have led to the framing of smart prisons and a commitment to the development of smart prisons in Hong Kong. The theories, concepts and empirical findings indicate that classical management and role leadership, as well as transactional leadership, are very unlikely to meet the unprecedented challenges associated with the journey of change towards smart prisons. Transformational leadership brings another dimension to managing organisational change, while ethical leadership permeates all aspects of a healthy penal system. Horizontal or collaborative leadership helps foster collaboration and innovation to figure out new solutions. On the basis of the findings, a leadership profile is developed that institutionalises collaboration and innovation that are ethical, agile, human-centred, pragmatic, and evidence-based as being essential to the further development and management of smart prisons. Moving beyond hierarchy and bureaucracy, the leadership profile creates a new agenda and rationale for the HKCS in its striving to become and remain an essential institution of government and governance.