Public trust in policing in Hong Kong

Abstract

Until the recent events of Occupy protests and heated debates about police actions against student protesters in Hong Kong, opinion surveys have consistently shown a remarkably high level of public confidence in the local police. In a survey of over thirty world cities conducted by the United Nations, for example, Hong Kong citizens were found to be ‘the most positive about police performance’. But what do people actually mean when they say the police are doing ‘a good job’? This paper is based on the focus group findings of a three-year research project on the fear of crime and trust in crime control in Hong Kong funded by the HK Research Grants Council (HKU740211H). It argues for the need to conceptualise citizens’ everyday understandings of policing and fairness as socially situated and culturally embedded in a low crime but restless society. More specifically, it suggests there are at least two contrasting ways of making sense of public confidence in police: an instrumental account where people believe the police are there to fight crime, and an expressive account where people are more concerned with whether police are successful in representing social values and cohesion. Overall, the paper aims to theorize the co-existence of two contrasting approaches to understanding policing in the Hong Kong case study and to draw out the implications for policing research in postcolonial societies.