In the past two decades ‘decarceration’ and ‘deinstitutionalisation’ have been key themes of youth justice in the West. Restrictions have been imposed on the courts, limiting their ability to hand out residential and custodial training sentences to young offenders. As an alternative, resources have been redirected into the development and expansion of community-based rehabilitation programmes. However, in Hong Kong large numbers of young offenders continue to be placed in residential and custodial institutions after very brief criminal careers, and for crimes which do not pose a serious risk to the community. This article makes use of a recently published research study to discuss the experiences of young male offenders in the Hong Kong youth justice system, and to consider why community-based rehabilitative programmes as direct alternatives to residential training and custody have been slow to develop. It then goes on to explore how from a cultural perspective the use of community-based programmes might be justified and how they could be developed around existing sentencing guidelines.