Book review: Cybercrime and its Victims
| Author | Joanne Smith |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758017738361 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
Elena Martellozzo and Emma A. Jane (editors)
Cybercrime and its Victims
Routledge: Abingdon, UK, 2017; xvþ233 pp.: ISBN 978-1-138-63944-7 (hardcover)
Reviewed by: Joanne Smith, University of Surrey, UK
DOI: 10.1177/0269758017738361
Cybercrime and its Victims – part of the Routledge Studies in Crime and Society collection –
aspires to ‘help fill knowledge gaps relating to victimisation online by exploring the social
construction of violence and victimisation in online spaces’ (p.5). Although the last few years
have seen a narrowing of those knowledge gaps, there is still a need for more interdisciplinary
academic inquiry into online violence and victimisation. This edited collection provides an
accessible introduction to some of the key themes and issues within this field, and is a welcome
addition to the growing body of cybercrime literature, and the (somewhat) more established field
of victimology.
The editors invite us to situate our reading of this book within a series of questions about the
nature and regulation of cyberspace, the ways that offline marginalisation is proliferated or
diminished in online space, and issues of surveillance and social control. They ask us to
remember that much of what occurs online is mundane, harmless and in fact positive – despite
what media coverage would have us believe – and encourage us into thinking about crime and
victimisation in cyberspace as complex and nuanced, shaped by the unique structures and
spaces of the internet, by broader dynamics of power, and by the challenges of re gulation. In
introducing the book in this way, the editors provide the reader with a framework within which
each of the chapters sits, with overarching themes such as power and control running through
the different chapters. This provides a coherence to Cybercrime and its Victims, preventing it
from becoming a series of disparate papers linked only by their associations with cybercrime:
credit must be given to the editors for not only structuring the book in this way, but also for their
careful selection of chapters.
The book is divided into five sections. The first of these sections presents us with two con-
ceptual chapters to lay the foundations upon which the later chapters are built. In the first chapter,
‘Victims of cybercrime: definitions and challenges’, Nicole A. Vincent provides the reader with an
overview of some of the ways in which the criminal law marginalises victims of cybercrime, and
the interplay between this and the characteristics of cybercrime. She makes a convincing argument
that the criminal law struggles to recognise the victims and harms of cybercrime. In the second
chapter, ‘Theorising power online’ by Chris Brickell, we are offered three frameworks within
which to understand the operation of power on ‘digital sexuality’: the constitution of subjectivities
and knowledge, the regulation of social intera ctions, and the perpetuation of inequalities. He
International Review of Victimology
2018, Vol. 24(1) 141–144
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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