Highest Female Prison Population? Hong Kong.
- 82newsbulletin
- Sep 29, 2020
- 2 min read
Written by Karrie Lam
Besides taking the crown for the most stressed out city, Hong Kong has found its way to the top of another list, making it the city with the most women behind bars. As of 2019, women comprised 20.1% of the prison population, of whom almost half are non-local and convicted of non-violent crimes including drug trafficking and immigration violations.
The correlation that’s often overlooked is that many of the women behind bars are victims rather than offenders - victims of exploitation through human trafficking. Most women jailed for drug-related crimes are typically low-level drug mules who were taken advantage of for their vulnerable backgrounds. Some domestic helpers are in fact underage girls unknowingly given false passports to work.
The situation in Hong Kong points to two major flaws in the conventional justice system. First, it is gender neutral, blindly subjugating women to gender biases. Puja Kapai, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, believes that the trafficking trade is unfortunately invisible and intractable as a “‘gendered’ problem”, despite the scale and prevalence in the region. Second, Hong Kong’s justice system is one of the few to make no clear distinction of the accused’s culpability in the drug operation. Thus, those convicted face some of the world’s harshest custodial sentences. Notably, the minimal sentence for trafficking 5 kilograms of cocaine is 26 years, 4 months. As Rachel Li, research and policy officer at Justice Centre Hong Kong, pointed out, “It is almost always people at the bottom of the food chain - vulnerable and marginalised women - that are being penalised, when people on top get away with it.” Ultimately, there is a lack of protection for trafficking victims.
Another contributing factor to the concerning female prison population is the false criminal charges employers file against their helper. Employers have been known to do so for the sake of avoiding paying helperes a long-service payment, as required by the Hong Kong law. As domestic helpers' address is always their employer’s home, helpers aren’t allowed to return home during their case, resulting in them being put in jail while awaiting the results. With the Final Court of Appeal recently ruling against a helper’s challenge of the controversial ‘live-in’ rule, it appears that this concern will not be eased any time soon.
Click Below for Further Reading!
More women are in Hong Kong's prisons than anywhere else. They should be protected, not criminalised
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