Law and Order in Sung China focuses on the roles that law enforcement and the treatment of criminals played in the functioning of traditional Chinese society. It examines basic aspects of the law-enforcement apparatus: who enforced the law and how, and how these men were recruited, trained, and controlled. Differences between rural and urban law enforcement are raised, along with changes in the patterns and practices of law enforcement over time.

In examining these aspects of Chinese law enforcement, the study describes the change in balance from a predominantly military force to a civil bureaucracy, with accompanying problems the state faced in finding a sufficient number of qualified and trustworthy law-enforcement agents. McKnight analyzes the procedures and policies that governed law-enforcement practices, from policing and apprehension to the judicial process of convicting criminals, and finally to methods of punishment.

Mcknight also explores the nature of Sung criminals in relation to their place in society and to the background of Confucian values in Sung China. The group found to have committed the most crimes and to have been of the most concern to the government was young, unskilled, and unattached males. This group formed the core of the habitual criminal class in medieval China, as it does today.

This comprehensive study provides the historian with a picture of law enforcement and justice in an important and well-documented period of Chinese history and should become a benchmark against which to measure change in the evolution of Chinese society and culture. The problems of criminals and deviants are not unique to Sung China, and in the final analysis the Sung government's solutions to these problems point both to unique qualities of Sung society and to aspects of law enforcement in any society