Contrasting cyber-dependent and traditional offenders: a comparison on criminological explanations and potential prevention methods

This chapter will focus on cyber-dependent crimes (i.e., malicious hacking). Of all crimes that could be called cybercrimes, these cyber-dependent crimes are theoretically most different from traditional crimes. They strongly rely on the anonymous digital context of IT-systems. Therefore, when comparing cyber-dependent offending to traditional offending, differences may be expected in: situations that provide opportunities for offending, personal characteristics and skills that increase the likelihood of offending, expected consequences of offending, etcetera. There is some empirical research that applies traditional criminological explanations for offending to cyber-dependent offending. However, almost no research provides an empirical comparison between cyber-dependent offenders and traditional offenders. This chapter will first provide arguments for possible differences between cyber-dependent offenders and traditional offenders on important domains in criminology: offending over the life-course, personal and situational risk factors for offending, and cyber-deviant behavior in social networks. Subsequently, it will focus on existing empirical research in these domains and a recent empirical comparison between cyber-dependent offenders and traditional offenders. After discussing motives for offending, implications for the prevention of cyber-offending will be reviewed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions in this area