What is digital criminology Dr James Tangen VC

What is digital criminology? Dr James Tangen VC 2020 Lecturer in Criminology Rm 00. 04, Hawthorn Building James. tangen@dmu. ac. uk

Taxonomies of cyber crime David Wall (2001): • Cyber-deception • Cyber-obscenity • Cyber-trespass • Cyber-violence Jewkes and Yar (2011): • Computer oriented • Computer assisted Mc. Guire and Dowling (2013): • Cyber-dependent • Cyber-enabled

Digital criminology • Based on Lupton’s (2012, 2015) ‘digital sociology’ • Key elements (Lupton, 2012: p. 5): – Critical digital sociology – Digital data analysis – Professional digital practice – Sociological analyses of digital media use

Digital criminology • Early papers emerging from Australian scholarship – Stratton, Powell & Cameron (2017) – Smith, Bennett Moses & Chan (2017) • A broader focus than simply cyber crime

Digital justice Policies • European Convention on Cyber Crime • Digital strategy (Ministry of Justice, 2012) • Vision 2025 (NPCC and APCC, 2017) Practices • Gathering & handling digital forensics (Casey, 2011) • Digitising prosecution files (

Digital justice • Digital divide – Unequal access to digital technologies (Green, 2017) • Government ‘Digital First’ agenda guiding Job Centre practices & roll-out of Universal Credit • Layering of punishment – “prisons are ‘communication’ poor environments and therefore there is no surprise that prisons are places which enhance digital poverty and strengthen the digital divide” (Knight, 2015: p. 3)

Digital engagement • New ways of researching – New textualities (Thrift, 2005) – ‘Big Data’ (Smith et al. , 2017) • New ways of communicating – Social media as a policing tool (Mejier & Thaens, 2013) – (Anonymous) blogging (Goldsmith, 2015)

Digital engagement • New forms of accountability for the police – Black Lives Matter (Smith et al. , 2017) – #-jacking (Jackson & Foucault Wells, 2015)

Digital desistance • Potential to transform probation practices and community justice – Drawing on developments in digital mental health (Christie, 2013) • Opportunities and challenges of bringing offender communication into the twenty-first century (Knight, 2015).

Transforming criminology? • Blaming victim behaviour? – “when discussing educational responses multiple officers focused on changing the behaviours of victims who consensually create images of themselves rather than on perpetrators who non- consensually share intimate images” (Dodge & Spencer, 2017: p. 15) • Are digital technologies a threat to criminology? – Emergence of ‘Crime Science’ & ‘pre-crime’ (Al Boni and Gerber, 2016)

Conclusion Digital criminology is… • an object of criminological focus • a medium through which criminology is ‘performed’ • a subjectivity for organising our understanding and approach to emerging technologies in the criminal justice system

Questions?

References • Casey, E. (2011). Foundations of Digital Forensics. In Eoghan Casey (Ed. ), Digital Evidence and Computer Crime (pp. 3– 34). Londond: Elsevier. • Dodge, A. , & Spencer, D. C. (2017). Online Sexual Violence, Child Pornography or Something Else Entirely? Police Responses to Non-Consensual Intimate Image Sharing among Youth. Social & Legal Studies, 96466391772486. http: //doi. org/10. 1177/0964663917724866

References • Goldsmith, A. (2015). Disgracebook policing: social media and the rise of police indiscretion. Policing and Society, 25(3), 249 – 267. • Green, A. E. (2017). Implications of technological change and austerity for employability in urban labour markets. Urban Studies, 54(7), 1638– 1654.

References • Jewkes Y and Yar M (2011) Introduction: The Internet, cybercrime and the challenges of the twenty-first century. In: Jewkes Y and Yar M (eds), Handbook of Internet Crime, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1– 8. • Lupton, D. (2012). Digital Sociology: An Introduction. Sydney: University of Sydney. • Lupton D (2015) Digital sociology. London: Routledge. • Mc. Guire M and Dowling S (2013) Cyber crime: A review of the evidence. London.

References • Meijer, A. , & Thaens, M. (2013). Social media strategies: Understanding the differences between North American police departments. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 343– 350. • MOJ (2012) Ministry of Justice: Digital Strategy. London: Ministry of Justice. • NPCC and APCC (2017) Policing Vision 2025. London.

References • Smith, G. J. D. , Bennett Moses, L. , & Chan, J. (2017). The Challenges of Doing Criminology in the Big Data Era: Towards a Digital and Data-driven Approach. The British Journal of Criminology, 57(2), 259– 274. • Stratton G, Powell A and Cameron R (2017) Crime and Justice in Digital Society: Towards a ‘Digital Criminology’. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 6(2): 17– 33. • Wall D (2001) Cybercrimes and the Internet. In: Wall D (ed. ), Crime and the Internet, London: Routledge, pp. 1– 17.