Policing Cybercrimes: responding to the transnational challenges of cybercrime

Professor Dr. David S. Wall, Criminology, SASS, Durham University, UK
Thursday, October 21, 2010

   Co-sponsored by the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) at Dartmouth College

Abstract:

Cybercrimes seem to have become a regular feature of daily news programming and the dramatic stories they relate to usually conclude with some form of demand for additional policing. Collectively, these news stories not only intensify the culture of fear about cybercrimes, but they also increase demands for policing whilst pressurizing the political process to respond. Yet, these are demands that cannot easily be met because Internet-related offending mainly takes place within a globalised and transnational context, while crime tends to be nationally defined and policing locally delivered. In this way cybercrimes present public police organizations with considerable challenges for order maintenance and law enforcement. Challenges that become intensified by the ‘reassurance gap’ that opens up between what the public demand and what the government and police can deliver. At the heart of these challenges is the observation that the most existing internet regulation and security is networked, but within this broader framework the public police play only a small part in the overall policing of the Internet. In other words, the internet is already subject to a significant element of self policing which must be utilised to improve the regulation of offending behaviours online.

In this talk I will argue that the future of policing the internet does not solely revolve around increasing the role and capacity of the public police, rather, it involves the public police engaging with the various networks of security that currently constitute the self-policing of the internet. However, the public police role in policing the Internet, therefore, needs to be more than just simply about acquiring new knowledge and capacity, it should be about forging new relationships with the other nodes within the transnational and global networks of Internet security. To become effective, these new relationships will require a range of transformations in understanding and practice to take place in order to enhance the effectiveness and legitimacy of the nodal architecture. I will then argue that there is some evidence that these new relationships are beginning to appear, however, but they are at risk of simply reconstituting a Peelian paradigm of traditional police values across a global span, which brings with it a range of instrumental and normative challenges. They are also being frustrated by current restrictions in police funding.

Bio:

David S. Wall, PhD, FRSA, AcSS is Professor of Criminology at Durham University where he conducts research and teaches in the fields of cybercrime, policing and intellectual property crime. He has published a wide range of articles and books on these subjects which include: Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age (Polity, 2007), Crime and Deviance in Cyberspace (ed. Ashgate, 2009), Cyberspace Crime (ed. Ashgate/ Dartmouth, 2003), Cyberspace Crime (ed. Ashgate/ Dartmouth, 2003), Crime and the Internet (ed. Routledge, 2001) and The Internet, Law and Society (ed. with Y. Akdeniz and C. Walker, Longman, 2000). He has also published a range of articles and books within the broader field of criminal justice, including Policy Networks in Criminal Justice (ed. with M. Ryan and S. Savage, McMillan Press, 2001), The British Police: Forces and Chief Officers (with M. Stallion, Police History Society, 1999), The Chief Constables of England and Wales (Ashgate/Dartmouth, 1998), Access to Criminal Justice (ed. with R. Young, Blackstone Press, 1996), Policing in a Northern Force (with K. Bottomley, C. Coleman, D. Dixon and M. Gill, Hull University, 1991). He is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) and a member of the ESRC Research Grants Board. He was formerly Head of the School of Law (2005-2007) and Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice (2000-2005) at the University of Leeds.

• Presentation slides
• The Dartmouth - "Prof. discusses Internet and crime"