Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age

POLITY, 2007

Posted: 9 Dec 2007 Last revised: 27 Jan 2024

See all articles by David S. Wall

David S. Wall

Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds

Abstract

How has the internet transformed criminal behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal activity? What new criminal opportunities have arisen? What impact might cybercrime have on public security?

This book carefully examines these and other important issues and discusses what is known about cybercrime, disentangling the rhetoric of risk assessment from its reality.

Looking at the full range of cybercrime, the text illustrates how the increase in personal computing power available within a globalized communications network has affected the nature of and response to criminal activities. Drawing on empirical research findings and multidisciplinary sources that author goes on to argue that we are beginning to experience a new generation of automated cybercrimes, which are almost completely mediated by networked technologies that are themselves converging.

It is argued within this book that we have now entered the world of low impact, multiple victim crimes in which bank robbers, for example, no longer have to meticulously plan the theft of millions of dollars. New technological capabilities at their disposal now mean that one person can effectively commit millions of robberies of one dollar each. Against this background, the author scrutinizes the regulatory challenges that cybercrime poses for the criminal (and civil) justice processes, at both the national and the international levels.

This book offers a very comprehensive, and intellectually robust, account of cybercrime in a progressing narrative and talks to a range of audiences that include advanced undergraduate and graduate students students of criminology, the social sciences and computing, as well as the practitioner and policy making communities.

NOW UPDATED - PLEASE see Outline of update Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Polity

Keywords: cybercrime, cybercrimes, criminology, technology, policing, computing

JEL Classification: K42, K14, K19, K29, K42

Suggested Citation

Wall, David S., Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age. POLITY, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1066922

David S. Wall (Contact Author)

Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds ( email )

Liberty Building
University of Leeds
Leeds, West Yorkshire LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
+44 113 343 9575 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.law.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff/wall/

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Abstract Views
3,805
PlumX Metrics