Journal #11

The overlap between criminal justice and cyber-crime seem to wax and wane depending on how a typical crime is described. For instance, some cyber-crimes are considered to be a white-collar crime, but not all white-collar crimes are considered cyber-crimes. Cyber-crime can be described as a crime or any wrongdoing with the use of a computer. Whereas a white-collar crime can be considered by the definition by Edwin Sutherland as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” Then you have regular crimes that go against federal or civil law such as theft or burglary. If by Sutherlands definition of “a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” commits a burglary but used his cell phone or computer to communicate with an accomplice, where does this crime then fall? Again, as I mentioned in the beginning, it depends on how the crime is described, and then ultimately who interprets the law of the crime at hand. One criminal offense can easily cross the lines of different disciplines within the criminal justice arena. In today’s day and age, it is ever apparent that the majority of citizens use their cell phone every day. Of those everyday citizens, there is a percentage of them who may contact another via text message, email, or social media. These same individuals’ cross paths and they speak to each other face to face. One of these individuals may turn the other in for harrassment, bullying, or anything else. The same falls true in how the ‘crime’ in interpreted or mainly how the individual researchers interpret the crime in their studies when the time comes. This same overlap described between criminal justice and cyber-crime, present the same overlap within disciplines discussed in class. Cybersecurity is its own discipline that sets to impede cybercrime by stopping it when encounter. Computer engineering and computer science are other disciplines that can overlap into cybersecurity where engineers and computer scientist develop and implement various technological aspects to curb cybercrime. This can take effect in firmware that is coded and then designed into new computers or various hardware. The more and more technology evolve, the more different disciplines begin to meld and overlap with one another.

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