The changing face of crime means safe Hong Kong cannot let down its guard
Bernard Chan says while the decrease in violent crime last year was something to cheer, Hong Kong must remain vigilant, especially against modern-day crime such as phone and email scams
READ MORE: Crime rates in Hong Kong last year at its lowest in 36 years despite claims Occupy Central spread lawlessness in community
The 18.5 per cent fall in homicides was actually a decline from 27 in 2014 to 22 in 2015 – that’s out of 7.2 million people. Detroit in the United States last year had 295 murders out of a population of 680,000. So our murder rate, per hundred thousand people, is just 0.3, while Detroit’s is 43. For every murder in Hong Kong, there are over 100 in Detroit. (Detroit may be extreme, but it ranked equal to Hong Kong, at 70th, in a recent survey of the world’s most liveable cities.)
The police statistics show a continuous decline in many other forms of serious crime. Robberies fell by 27.8 per cent – from 309 in 2014 to 223 in 2015. That is the lowest number since these crime figures were first collected, in 1969. Only one of last year’s robberies was committed with a real gun – and that was the first since 2006 (the culprit was arrested on the mainland). Assaults and arson have declined, while reported rapes went up from 56 to 70.
Because the absolute numbers are so low, we cannot necessarily read a trend into year-on-year figures. But for some crimes, there seems to be a clear upward pattern.
The number of blackmail cases went from 885 to 1,366. Police say this is due to people being photographed in the nude on sex chat internet sites, and then threatened. This is a new form of blackmail; it involves new technology and media, and the perpetrators are usually overseas – typically in Southeast Asia – making it far harder for our police to tackle the problem.
The biggest crime challenge facing Hong Kong is probably cybersecurity – threats against banks, utility companies and other organisations in the form of data theft and even terrorist activity
This is a good example of why we cannot be relaxed about Hong Kong’s low crime rates. It is very comforting to look at international comparisons for standard serious crimes. We can see, for example, that Hong Kong’s robbery rate of 4.3 per 100,000 compares well with Singapore’s (9.8) and is a fraction of New York City’s (195) or London’s (260).