This dissertation, "Police Reform in Contemporary China: a Study of Community Policing in Hong Kong and Mainland China" by Chi-kwong, Sonny, Au, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. DOI: 10.5353/th_b4501275 Subjects: Community policing - China - Hong Kong Community policing - China

In Policing China, Suzanne E. Scoggins delves into the paradox of China's self-projection of a strong security state while having a weak police bureaucracy. Assessing the problems of resources, enforcement, and oversight that beset the police, outside of cracking down on political protests, Scoggins finds that the central government and the Ministry of Public Security have prioritized "stability maintenance" (weiwen) to the detriment of nearly every aspect of policing. The result, she argues, is a hollowed out and ineffective police force that struggles to deal with everyday crime. Using interviews with police officers up and down the hierarchy, as well as station data, news reports, and social media postings, Scoggins probes the challenges faced by ground-level officers and their superiors at the Ministry of Public Security as they attempt to do their jobs in the face of funding limitations, reform challenges, and structural issues. Policing China concludes that despite the social control exerted by China's powerful bureaucracies, security failures at the street level have undermined Chinese citizens' trust in the legitimacy of the police and the capabilities of the state.

The volume presents an extensive investigation into the process of reforms of detention powers in today’s China and offers an in-depth analysis of the debates surrounding the reformist attempts. The chapters in this collection demonstrate that legislative and institutional reforms in this area result from political opportunities - openings and tensions at the central institutional levels of political authority - and contingent social and political factors. The book examines legal and institutional reforms to institutions of detention and imprisonment that have occurred since the 1990s, with a particular focus on the 21st century. Its content follows three particular lines of enquiry concerning the issue of deprivation of liberty in contemporary China. The first deals with the academic and theoretical debates on the subject of imprisonment and detention. The related chapters explain the difficulties encountered in this area of research and understandings of the discourses of reform through labour in Western and Chinese scholarship. The second deals with the specific issues of criminal and administrative forms of deprivation of liberty, examining in particular the institutional and legislative dimensions, considering the relationship between reforms and criminal justice policy agendas. The third assesses the meaning of institutional reforms in the context of the changing state-society relationship in contemporary China.

With nearly 20 percent of the worlds population located in China, what happens there is significant to all nations. Sweeping changes have altered the cultural landscape of China, and as opportunities for wealth have grown in recent years, so have opportunities for crime. Police Reform in China provides a rare and insightful glimpse of policing in

This book documents a systematic investigation into various aspects of policing in the People's Republic of China, including its scholarship, idea, origin, history, education, culture, reform, and theory. It approaches the study of Chinese policing from an indigenous perspective, informed by local empirical data. In proposing an innovative theory of community policing entitled «Police Power as a Social Resource Theory», the book seeks to look at crime as a personal problem, and police as a social resource, from the perspective of the people and not the state.

This book explores the theoretical and empirical dimensions of community crime prevention in China, examining in particular the role of social capital in a rapidly modernizing economic, social and political context. In doing so it provides a vivid picture of contemporary crime and crime control in China as well as analyzing the very particular Chinese approach to community crime prevention, looking at such social institutions as the household registration system, the neighbourhood committee, the work unit and the public security bureau. The particular focus of this book is on BLSCC − Building Little Safe and Civilized Communities − in the city of Shenshen which has been undergoing rapid change. The book looks at two contrasting communities within the city, looking at their different characteristics and the differing ways in which social capital operates in relation to crime and crime prevention. As well as shedding light on the hitherto largely hidden subject of crime prevention in China this book also makes an important contribution to wider debates about social capital and its potential, an invaluable study based on unique research.