Cyber Criminology: Evolving a novel discipline with a new journal

Abstract

Cyberspace presents an exciting new frontier for criminologists. Virtual reality and computer mediated communications challenge the traditional discourse of criminology, introducing new forms of deviance, crime, and social control (McKenzie 1996). Since the 1990s, academics have observed how the cyberspace has emerged as a new locus of criminal activity (Thomas and Loader 2000; Littlewood 2003; Yar 2005), but in general, criminology has been remiss in its research into the phenomena of cyber crime and has been slow to recognize the importance of cyberspace in changing the nature and scope of offending and victimization (Mann and Sutton 1998; Jewkes 2006). A new, radical discipline named cyber criminology is the need of the hour to explain and analyze the crimes in the internet. The field of cyber criminology crystallizes for many Scientists and Social scientists an area of research at the interface between Computer Science, Internet Science and Criminology. I define cyber criminology as ʺthe study of causation of crimes that occur in the cyberspace and its impact in the physical space”. For a year or so, the word cyber criminology has slowly appeared in the internet. Also, McAfee has used an alternate word “Virtual Criminology” in their report published in 2006. The first conference devoted entirely to this area was the “Cyber Criminology and Digital Forensics Initiative Conference” which took place in Spokane Valley, WA, USA in October 2006. This was also a new direction to segregate cyber‐ forensics and cyber criminology. Quite often, cyber criminology is merged with cyber‐forensics. There is a need to identify the differences between cyber criminology and cyber‐forensics. Cyber‐forensics deals exclusively with the investigation of cyber crimes, whereas, cyber criminology deals with the causation of cyber crimes.