Hong Kong prisons see uptick in non-Chinese inmates with many behind bars over drug offences

An increasing number of foreigners were put behind bars last year in Hong Kong, with many of them coming from Southeast Asia.

The Correctional Services Department said yesterday it had received 1,525 non-Chinese national inmates from 65 countries until the end of last year, marking a 20 per cent jump from 2014.
Foreign prisoners accounted for 18 per cent of the average daily penal population, compared to 15 per cent in 2014.

Nearly 950 of the non-Chinese nationals were Asian, with Vietnamese, Indonesians and Pakistanis leading the way. A quarter of foreign remands originated from Africa, mostly Tanzania.

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“We cannot draw conclusions about the rise,” said Woo Ying-ming, the department’s operations assistant commissioner.

“We can only guess about the influx of foreigners and that the higher number of arrests contributed to the surge.”

Police figures showed the number of arrested non-Chinese national visitors climbed by 27.9 per cent last year to 2,136, with 232 accused of taking up unlawful employment.

Commissioner Issac Yau Chi-chiu said that, as of last month, nearly a quarter of convicted non-Chinese nationals committed drug-related offences, while the rest mainly got involved with illegal employment, forgery and thefts. He said 260 foreign prisoners were on recognizance at the time they were put in custody.

Yau stressed that the department did not know if any were asylum seekers. “We do not need to know if they are refugees,” Yau continued.