Criminal justice and cybercrime overlap in many ways; however, they can often be perceived quite differently. Criminal justice was born out of a physical domain, whereas the intangible nature of cyberspace is not always as clear. For example, when someone commits a crime against a person or their possessions, there is a very physical reality to it. To the contrary, when someone commits a cybercrime, they do it across a digital medium; there is not necessarily a direct physical presence. To investigate cybercrime, the case would have to undergo digital forensics to identify a particular digital identification, and more importantly, the habits of the potential cybercriminal. It is understanding the sociology and psychology that provides the overlaps between criminal justice and cybercrime.

Technically, cybercrime meets the basic requirements of a traditional crime in that they are both identified as illegal and can be committed against a person or entity. Both also have the sociological implication in that it may merely be a societal norm that can apply an adverse label beyond that of a legal ruling. From a criminal justice perspective, a cybercriminal can be tried and sentenced just the same as a traditional criminal. Like criminal justice, the psychology of a cybercrime attempts to understand what is behind a cybercriminals motive and how to correct (punish) the adverse behavior and/or prevent future occurrences. Like criminal justice, a cybercriminal’s motives can originate across a wide spectrum of justifications.

There are several challenges that tend to segregate these two disciplines. For starters, because of the intangible nature, there are a lot of myths about cybercrime that contributes to the lack of understanding. Another issue is in collecting the necessary data to effectively analyze cybercrime from a preventive and corrective perspective. From an academic standpoint, there is only a small intersection between the two disciplines; as such, the requirements, courses, and students are not the same. Although they both significantly overlap from a multidisciplinary approach, maturing cybercrime to the level equitable to criminal justice will require much more integration at the base level in order to leverage years of study and research into the criminal justice and the criminal mind.