Karen Joe Laidler

Doing criminology from the periphery: Crime and punishment in Asia

In a recent article in Theoretical Criminology, Katja Franko Aas (2012: 12) reflects on the geopolitical imbalances and ‘situatedness’ of criminological theory and the pervasive North–South divide in knowledge production. Notwithstanding the growing awareness of global connectedness in transnational and comparative criminology and engagement with the legacies of imperialism and (post-)colonialism in recent years (see, for example, Agozino, 2003; Cunneen, 2011; Sheptycki and Wardak, 2005), criminology has remained essentially a discipline of the ‘North’. The marginalization of social experience and knowledge production of the Global South has meant that many important criminological problems in the South are not covered in conventional Anglo-American criminology texts. Critics of the North Atlantic epistemic hegemony have pointed to the ‘distorted’ claims of universality of social theories produced in the North (Keim, 2010: 169) and the misleading or counter-productive nature of its theoretical presumptions and crime control models when applied to southern contexts (Cain, 2000; Connell, 2006). Further, scholars working outside the metropolitan centres have struggled to break away from the established ethnocentric frameworks of knowledge production, disparities in research capacities and power relations. As Aas (2012: 15–16) puts it, it is high time that criminology develops ‘more democratic epistemologies ... as an analytic imperative and an opportunity for theoretical innovation’ and turns to the South as ‘a platform for theorizing the global from the periphery’. In responding to the rallying call to expand criminology’s geopolitical imagination and to ‘see from the peripheries’ (Aas, 2012: 11), this Special Issue takes East and SouthEast Asia as the point of departure and showcases criminological work undertaken in Hong Kong, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.

Bureaucratic Justice The Incarceration of Mainland Chinese Women Working in Hong Kong’s Sex Industry

Since Hong Kong’s return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) there has been a significant rise in the number of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong, including women crossing the border to engage in sex work. Sex work itself is not a crime in Hong Kong, but related activities, like soliciting, are prohibited. Sex work is treated as work for immigration purposes, and visitors who engage in work without an employment visa are breaching their conditions of stay. More than 10,000 mainland Chinese women have been arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced in recent years, causing the correctional population to expand beyond capacity. The authors examine the experiences of 58 incarcerated women in their encounters with the Hong Kong criminal justice system and find that women are processed in a highly routinized bureaucratic manner. They consider the purpose served by the largely bureaucratic form of justice that has emerged in response to migrant sex workers in Hong Kong.

Doing criminological ethnography in China: Opportunities and challenges

This article reflects on the emerging criminological research enterprise in China. We provide a brief overview on the nature of criminological knowledge production in China, particularly in relation to practical and political constraints. We contend that while there are distinct challenges associated with doing criminology in China, there are also new possibilities for alternative methodologies and critical analyses to push the boundaries of administrative criminology. Through the example of a study of migrants and motorcycle taxi driving in a Chinese city, we argue that an ethnography of the periphery can facilitate our understanding of the nuances of the social and cultural construction of the migrant crime problem, bringing to the foreground globally as well as locally relevant tensions, fragmented realities and hybridized identities.

Gang Youth, Risk Behaviors, and Negative Health Outcomes

Gang youth have been a perennial issue with criminologists for nearly a century. Much evidence suggests that something about participation within a gang leads youth to commit more crime when compared to non-gang youth. Gang youth are at an increased risk of arrest and incarceration for serious offences in comparison to other delinquent youth. Gang youth also are more likely to report participation in what are described as ‘health risk behaviors’, which include substance use, violence, and unsafe sexual practices. Consequently, gang youth are at an elevated risk of exposure to the negative health outcomes related to such behaviors, including addiction, overdose, infection, injury, disability, and death. This chapter offers data gathered in three cities over a 20-year period to provide a descriptive epidemiology of substance use, violence and unsafe sexual practices among gang-identified youth. We conclude with a discussion on how public health approaches towards other high-risk categories of youth could compliment current criminal justice efforts aimed at curbing the influence or impact of youth gangs.

Doing criminology on media and crime in Asia

This article draws from recent critiques on media criminology in the North. In doing so, we are interested in whether and how these critiques figure in relation to those doing criminology in the South, in particular in Asia. We first describe why media criminology has yet to develop as an area of study in its own right and what lessons we might draw from the development of media criminology in the Northern context. We then examine the contours of crime and media research in the East and Southeast Asian context, looking particularly at how existing studies on media and deviance reinforce or challenge traditional notions about problems and problem populations, and how media and deviance are intertwined in a variety of culturally inflected ways that reflect broader political institutions and political contestations. Third, we begin to sketch out the contributions from other disciplines to inform the study of crime and media in Asia. Here we suggest that some disciplines, particularly the rich tradition of sociology of media studies and cultural studies, may be better placed to analyze media and crime in ways that administrative criminology in the Asian context cannot. Significantly, as our preliminary mapping of media representations of specific crime issues in Asia indicates, studies on reporting crime and fictionalizing crime in Asia have produced critical insights into the construction of the crime landscape (its fears and concerns, its potential victims, and the role of the citizen and government) in the region.

Thirty years of criminology at HKU: themes and trends in crime and its control

Purpose This paper, aims to contribute to the wider project of understanding the production of knowledge about crime and justice and, “to cultivate and sustain a reflexive awareness about the conditions under which such knowledge is (or is not) produced” (Loader and Sparks, 2012, p. 6). In reviewing the core issues and concerns about crime and control from the 1980s as articulated in these research dissertations, the authors seek to be self-reflexive about academic criminology as a field of enquiry in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach In this research, 209 dissertations, completed between 1988 and 2015, are categorized on the basis of the main subject or theme of investigation carried out by each of the research paper. Findings and originality/value This discussion is among the first and few attempts to look at the development of criminology in the Hong Kong China region and draws from the unique perspectives of practitioners – those working on the front lines – in their attempts to understand crime and its control with a criminological imagination.

Becoming a Male Client of Compensated Dating

ABSTRACT This study explores men’s experiences in compensated dating (CD), particularly their process of becoming a client of CD in Hong Kong. By drawing on 30 individual interviews with male clients, cyber-ethnography of a major CD on-line forum, informal conversations with CD participants, off-line participant observations, and the sparse literature available on this under-examined social phenomenon, we also analyze men’s subjective understandings of being a client, of CD providers, and of CD itself, which influence men’s CD experiences and condom use behavior. Finally, this study sheds light on the contemporary issues of masculinity and sexuality in Hong Kong.

TRAFFICKING OF MAINLAND CHINESE WOMEN INTO HONG KONG'S SEX INDUSTRY: PROBLEMS OF IDENTIFICATION AND RESPONSE

The article discusses the trafficking of women from mainland China to Hong Kong, China to be involved in the sex industry. The authors opinions regarding the lack of enforcement of regulations regarding the sex industry in Hong Kong are discussed. Increases which have occurred regarding the number of Chinese women involved in the sex industry in Hong Kong are mentioned. The role in which Asian governments are required to play in protecting women from becoming victims in the sex industry are discussed. Reasons for the increase which has been seen in the number of sex workers in Hong Kong are mentioned. Keywords: Human trafficking

The Asian Gang: Ethnicity, Identity, Masculinity

In recent years the British mass media have discovered a new and urgent social problem - the Asian gang. Images of urban deprivation and the Underclass have combined with fears of growing youth militancy and masculinities-in-crisis to position Asian, and especially Muslim, young men as the new folk devil. This reimagination of Asian young men has focused on violence, drug abuse and crime, set against a backdrop of cultural conflict, generational confusion and religious fundamentalism. The Asian gang, it seems, is the inevitable product of these social forces. But what is the reality? Based on three years fieldwork with a group of Bangladeshi young men in inner-city London, this book attempts to explore the complex mythologies and realities of contemporary Asian youth experience. Taking the gang as its starting point, the study examines the interaction of representation and reality, ethnicity and masculinity in a textured, in-depth and personal perspective that challenges traditional views on Asian communities and identities.