What is the overlap between criminal justice and cybercrime? How does this overlap relate to the other disciplines discussed in this class?

There are a lot of overlaps when it comes to criminal justice and cybercrime. Some of those overlaps are how criminologists define cybercrime, how criminologists explain cyber offending and victimization, how criminal justice scholars identify guardianship strategies, how they measure victimization and offending, and so on.  For starters, criminologists have multiple ways they define cybercrime. Some of those ways are defining cybercrime from a harm orientation, defining cybercrime from an ethical orientation, defining cybercrime from a social constructionist perspective, defining cybercrime from a deviance perspective, defining cybercrime from a white-collar crime orientation, and defining cybercrime from workplace deviance orientation. Criminologists that study cybercrime focus on explaining cybercrime and victimization.  The most popular criminological explanations of cybercrime include neutralization theory, self-control theory, learning theory, and routine activities theory. Neutralization theory suggests that individuals know right from wrong, but they rationalize or neutralize their behavior in order to give themselves the justification to commit a crime. The five original neutralizations were developed by Sykes and Matza in 1957, those neutralizations are Denial of injury, Denial of victim, Denial of responsibility, Appeal to higher loyalties, and Condemnation of condemners. Criminal investigators use digital forensics to investigate crimes. Digital forensics is a relatively new type of criminal investigation that refers to investigations of cyber, computer, electronic, or other types of cybercrimes. Just as an understanding of criminal law is necessary to understand criminal justice, an understanding of cyber law is needed in order to fully understand cybercrime and cybersecurity. Therefore, there are several ways that cyber activities are regulated by criminal law. Those are: Hacking laws regulate against the unauthorized access of a computer. Federal malware law was incorporated into the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1991 to make it illegal to intentionally damage computers by transmitting viruses, worms, or other forms of malicious malware. Cybercrimes against property include theft, cyber bank theft, theft of trade secrets, theft of services, various forms of fraud, extortion, and blackmail. And Cybercrimes against persons include cyber harassment, cyber stalking, and cyber threats. In conclusion, there are many different ways that criminal justice and cybercrime overlap, and it was very interesting learning about this because there are many ways that they relate to each other that I would’ve never thought of.

Reference:

Cybersecurity and Criminal Justice: Exploring the Intersections