Chapter 21 Essay questions

  1. Presentation of the case study. This first essay will require you to present a real-life case study. This can be a cybercrime event that has occurred in isolation, or a series of similar cybercrime events. There are no jurisdictional boundaries; it may have occurred in the country you are resident, internationally, or crossed borders. For this essay, you should first introduce and describe the case study, and then relate it to the relevant academic literature about this particular type of crime more generally. This case study will be the focus of the subsequent three essays.
  2. Critical analysis of victimisation, costs and harms. You should consider the reported and likely victims, and the costs and harms arising from the case study you presented in Essay 1. In particular, you should relate the costs and harms to the relevant academic literature.
  3. Cybercrime as routine activity. Apply the routine activity approach, explaining how it accounts, or fails to account, for the event/s in your case study. You will need to describe the key features of the routine activity approach, correctly defining and interpreting the theoretical concepts. You should relate it to relevant academic literature.
  4. Prevention and disruption. Outline ways in which the case study presented in Essay 1 may have been prevented or disrupted, using both situational and social crime prevention techniques. You should relate your essay to the relevant academic literature relating to crime prevention and cybercrime disruption.
  5. What role should the police play in responding to cybercrime? How might other actors - public, private, community, international, and local, be involved, and what challenges might they face? How does this fit into wider trends in criminal justice policy since the 1980s?
  6. How justified might we be in describing cybercrime as a ‘new’ form of crime that is different to ‘traditional’ forms of crime? What role might technology play in this - and how might information and communication technologies specifically create new opportunities for crime and control?
Back to top