According to a report from the London-based Institute for Criminal Policy Research, Hong Kong’s female prison population rate of 19.4 percent is the highest in the world.
Among countries with a population over 60,000, Hong Kong has the highest proportion of females in prison when compared to 219 penal systems worldwide. In roughly 80 percent of prison systems worldwide, the incarceration rate for females is between two and nine percent.
Local experts provide some perspective on the matter, claiming that the high proportion of female prisoners is influenced by foreign sex workers who stay in the territory illegally, pointing out that the local female prison population is actually shrinking.
Karen Joe Laidler, a sociology professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies criminal justice and gender issues, said, “It is highly unusual, the fact that the proportion is higher than in any other country,” reports the SCMP.
“The figure is being driven by women coming from abroad and engaging in work where they are basically in breach of immigration ordinances,” added Laidler. “[But] the number of women being admitted to prison in Hong Kong is in decline.”
According to the Correctional Services Department (CSD), the number of women incarcerated in Hong Kong fell by 9.5 percent from 2012 to 2014.
Laidler expressed that these women often overstay their visas and are easily detected by law enforcement because they are soliciting in public. The women, however, usually only serve short sentences of about three months, she claimed.
A spokesman for CSD said that local Hong Kong women account for around half of Hong Kong’s female prison population.
Kalwan Kwan, a sociology professor at Hong Kong University said, “Take away these mainlanders and foreign female prisoners’ figures, the local Hong Kong girls’ conviction rate is more or less the same as in other countries, though a bit high with female drug abusers.”
Alfred Mak, a former senior CSD officer and former director of the Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Abusers, said Hong Kong courts typically don’t deport foreign workers who are convicted of crimes, which causes higher incarceration rates.
The growth of the worldwide female prison population has outpaced that of men, increasing to more than 700,000 worldwide and doubling since 2000, according to the report.
