This brief offers an overview of the prevailing debates in police oversight and accountability through an analysis of policing in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. It places emphasis on three major controversies of oversight: professionalism, representation, and empowerment. Arguing that traditional models do not accurately depict variations in police systems in Asia, the volume aims to bring attention to the implementation of these three concepts and clearly articulate the power relationship within these Asian police oversight mechanisms. This brief will be a useful resource for researchers in policing as well as criminologists, political scientists, and sociologists, particularly those specializing in East Asia.
About the Author: Dr Lawrence Ka-ki Ho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. His research interests are the history and sociology of policing, comparative policing practices, public order management, criminal justice systems, and public policies. Lawrence is currently undertaking several research projects on Hong Kong policing and comparative policing practices, including the professionalization of Hong Kong Police, the transforming role of the policewomen; policing in colonial & SAR Hong Kong & Macau, private policing in Hong Kong, youth and deviance policing, and comparative policing strategies for protest management.
Jason Kwun-hong Chan is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. He is interested in private police, policing studies, social movement, state-society relationship, and colonial Hong Kong history. He also served as sessional lecturer and research assistants in various tertiary institutions in Hong Kong.Dr Garth den Heyer is a researcher in policing and counter terrorism and instructor with the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. He was a New Zealand police officer for more than 38 years, retiring at the rank of inspector. For more than 20 years he was responsible for the research, development and application of national, organizational and border security, counterterrorism, emergency management, and search and rescue and disaster victim identification, policies, procedures, plans and responses. He has been with ASU since the summer semester of 2015 and teaches courses in homeland security, and international and domestic terrorism.
Dr Jen-shuo Hsu is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Law at the Hokkaido University, Japan. His research interests are the history, law, policy and sociology of policing in East Asia, sociology of law, human rights, social movement, legal mobilization and judicial system. Hsu is currently undertaking several researches on post-colonial policing in East Asia, comparative police law and protest policing, history of political policing and the democratization of policing in Taiwan and Japan, and legal mobilization movement in East Asia.
Dr Arata Hirai is an Assistant Professor (Junior Researcher) in the Organization for Regional and Inter-regional Studies at WASEDA University, Japan. He earned PhD in Political Science from WASEDA University. He is also a PhD Candidate at the School of International Studies, Peking University, China. His research interests are Transitional Justice, comparative politics, East Asian studies, the history and politics of Taiwan, the social movements and policing in East Asian countries. Arata is currently workingon various comparative research projects mainly including the politics and laws of Transitional justice, the memory activisms after WW2 and the police oversight mechanisms.
