The Nature of Virtual Criminality
| Published date | 01 June 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/a017403 |
| Date | 01 June 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
DIALOGUE AND DEBATE
THE NATURE OF VIRTUAL
CRIMINALITY
The latest contribution to our Dialogue and Debate section is stimulated by
Wanda Capeller’s bold and wide-ranging attempt to grasp the nature of
virtual criminality as a phenomenon of the internet age. Moving from a dis-
cussion of emergent characteristics of late modern society to forms of crim-
inal deviance and modes of regulation, Capeller suggests that the internet has
to be seen as giving rise to new forms of criminality and new problems of
regulation. She suggests that these in turn invoke the need for a new crimi-
nological paradigm, one that emphasizes the abstract, systemic nature of
criminality in the computer age. Her article is a sophisticated attempt to think
about the nature of crime, criminality and its control in the context of a new
social medium and changing social times.
Responding to Capeller, Peter Grabosky is sceptical about the absolute
novelty of these phenomena, and he relates new forms of crime and problems
of control to characteristics of criminality that predate the development of
the internet. At the same time, he acknowledges that recognizable crimes can
now be committed in completely different ways, and that problems of regu-
lation are concomitantly enhanced. Francis Snyder takes up Capeller’s argu-
ments about the novelty of internet crime and its control. Drawing on his
experience of transnational regulation in other areas, he argues that the field
must be understood not only in terms of new sites of criminality, but also in
terms of new sites of governance which draw on different modes of control.
He concludes by encouraging Capeller to develop her conception of a new
systemic paradigm for computer crime.
It is plain that the internet has opened up many new opportunities for com-
munication and that many of these have positive social effects. It is also clear
that it has introduced a whole series of new phenomena, issues and problems
that are central to our understanding of modern crime, crime control and
criminality. It is on the precise character of these phenomena that the present
dialogue hinges. In considering something so novel as internet crime, it serves
to initiate debate and to raise as many questions as it answers. We hope that
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200106) 10:2 Copyright © 2001
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 10(2), 227–228; 017403
04 Debate Intro (bc/d) 30/4/01 10:26 am Page 227
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