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Hong-Kong-style community policing: a study of the Yau Ma Tei fruit market

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Abstract

This paper explores the policing of a traditional wholesale fruit market located in a densely populated neighborhood of urban Hong Kong. Based on ethnographic and historical research, we outline the political arrangements that govern the discretionary arrangements of police power at the market. A historically developed system maintains an informal status quo against various pressures to change. We identify crucial features in the contemporary policing system that emerge from a fusion between the democratic ethos of community policing ideals and non-democratic aspects of local administration in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. These features of this historically developed mode of order-maintenance, we suggest, might be seen as broadly characteristic of a “Hong Kong style” community policing.

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Notes

  1. The research on which this paper is based was conducted between 2009 and 2013. It included a review of relevant newspaper and government archives, ten months of participant observation in the Yau Ma Tei market, and in-depth interviews with thirty informants including police, district council members, market vendors, and neighborhood residents.

  2. The police operational districts are not geographically identical to the government’s administrative districts. For example, the Yau Tsim Mong government district contains two police districts, Yau Tsim and Mong Kok.

  3. “Offensive trades” refers to business involved in plucking birds, boiling bones, melting tallow or processing manure.

  4. Ms. Lee framed the history of the issue by referring to the Audit Department’s record of a 1969 government decision to relocate the market.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong, Room 928, 9/F. The Jockey Club Tower, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Jeffrey T. Martin

  2. School of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University of Hong Kong, 30 Good Shepherd Street, Homantin, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Wayne W. L. Chan

Authors
  1. Jeffrey T. Martin
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  2. Wayne W. L. Chan
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Correspondence to Jeffrey T. Martin.

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Table 1 Cited interviews
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Martin, J.T., Chan, W.W.L. Hong-Kong-style community policing: a study of the Yau Ma Tei fruit market. Crime Law Soc Change 61, 401–416 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9496-0

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