The Emergence of the Disciplinary Welfare Sanction in Hong Kong PATRICIA GRAY Lecturer, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong Abstract: This article rejects the contention of liberal writers that the historical development of juvenile justice has been a story of continual reform reflecting the struggle between the principles of justice, welfare and punishment. Instead it presents a revisionist history of the Hong Kong juvenile justice system from a strategic-relational perspective. The juvenile court is conceptualised as an institutional network of power relations, struggling to formulate policies and programmes to regulate the behaviour of delinquent youth. Out of these struggles a strategic policy direction evolves, not through the work of any one individual or class faction, but as part of a wider hegemonic campaign. This argument is elaborated through an historical account of the emergence of the disciplinary welfare sanction in Hong Kong at the end of the 1970s, and its consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s. This new approach was hailed as a more progressive way of managing the juvenile crime problem. However in reality it provided a more covert and discerning way of disciplining working class delinquents, which matched the hegemonic project of the liberal-consultative state in other sites of power. 1 Introduction: The Juvenile Justice System as a Site of Strategy and Class Power Liberal writers often contend that reform in Western juvenile justice systems is the outcome of a philosophical contest between the principles of justice, welfare and punishment (Parsloe 1978; Morris and Giller 1987). From a radical perspective (Clarke 1985; Pitts 1988), however, such debates miss the point and oversimplify the complex socio-political process of juvenile justice. This article will pursue the radical critique, by presenting a strategic- relational approach to juvenile justice issues in which the juvenile court is viewed as a potential site of class domination. 2 One can only begin to under- stand this process of domination by conceptualising the juvenile justice system as a ‘social relation’ which is the ‘site, the generator and the product of strategies’ (Jessop 1990, p. 260), or an arena of struggle where various dominant class factions compete over the most effective strategies to regu- late the behaviour of delinquent working-class youth. While I would agree with Smart (1995) and Garland (1990) that class interests are only one of several gendering, cultural, moral and bureau- cratic-administrative social forces struggling to influence delinquency 187 The Howard Journal Vol 36 No 2. May 97 ISSN 0265–5527, pp. 187-208  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA